Album Review: YTILAER by Bill Callahan

His third album in four years shows how the former Smog man continues to raise the bar creatively, delivering another sumptuous and rewarding listen Over the course of his career Bill Callahan has sustained a remarkable level of consistency, rarely putting a foot wrong whether when making music under the Smog name or, as in more recent years, when releasing albums under his own name. This latter period has seen him make discreet variations with each release, but there have always been certain constants at play, most notably his alluringly rich voice, cleverly honed wordplay and lesser deployed rhymes, or the overarching sense of precise musical tailoring. Albums like 2009's Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle and 2011's Apocalypse attracted deserved critical acclaim, something which has stayed with him with each subsequent release.

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Deep thoughts and good music I feel something coming on, a disease or a song Bill Callahan's latest is entitled YTI​⅃​A​Ǝ​Я (it's "Reality" flipped over, get it?). Like his usual work, the album falls into "love it or hate it" territory, with Callahan half-singing and half-talking his way through philosophical lyrics. Here, there are three predominant concerns: animals, dreams, and death, with discussion of said topics producing moods ranging from faintly humorous to gut-wrenchingly sad.

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What is the opposite of reality? Is it a dream? Or a phantasm of the truth, simply another version of reality, bent and manipulated to suit the trappings of time? This is the subject matter that Bill Callahan explores on YTI⅃AƎЯ, the singer/songwriter's latest full-length solo album: his eighth as Callahan, or his nineteenth if we count the Smog records. The follow-up to 2020's Gold Record, YTI⅃AƎЯ sees Callahan pondering the very fabric of our waking lives, tipping dreams into reality, or at least a version of reality. Unlike Gold Record, the songs on YTI⅃AƎЯ are less about scenes and characters, and more about direct contemplations of existence.

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"And we're coming out of dreams," sings Bill Callahan on opener First Bird, as we enter a world of subtle psychedelic guitars and twisted horns, all swirling deliciously around his earthy baritone. Naked Souls and Coyotes, in particular, take flight, with both weighing in around the six-and-a-half minute mark. The reversed typography suggests that our perceptions are going to be altered, though Callahan has always looked at the world differently from mere mortals.

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The initially frustrating title of Bill Callahan's new album YTI⅃AƎЯ suggests that the songwriter holds up some kind of mirror to the world. The dozen songs themselves do nothing so direct. Callahan has his own way of processing the world, and while that way might be different than it was in his Smog days, it still has as much to do with refraction as it does reflection.

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