Callahan, Bill / Apocalypse

Drag City

Essentially an ensemble recorded live in the studio, BILL CALLAHAN’s Apocalypse is the corpus delecti. Something happened here! If tape is like meat, this record is the whole hog! No cuts! Delectables and guts! In the opening salvo “Drover,” the cattle is herded. Everyone is in this roundup—this is the big one! Listeners! Laughers! Pundits! Wags! Haters! Hausfraus! Mr. Memory and Mrs. Future! Callahan, riding on the back of his band, corrals them all and guides them single-handedly through the Valley with love and ferocity. “Drover” is the universal gathering, but “Baby’s Breath” is one man’s plot of land. The focus turns again outward, next, in “America!” Looking at “the last 100 years,”—which we reckon is about the narrative age of this LP—“America!” is a love letter if we’ve ever had the privilege to read one over someone else’s shoulder. “Universal Applicant,” then, is the looking deep within. The flame in the mirror. Canyons can look like cartoons even when they are real. Side two begins with “Riding for the Feeling.” Saying goodbye to a mass, an ice floe. A wave that sweeps away and away and keeps coming back. It is breath. “Free’s” is the song of the truly free, the ones that know being free means being kept by the free. “One Fine Morning” ends it all. The mountains that create the valleys of Drover bow down. “Hey! No more drovering!” This record makes us wonder what has really happened in the last 100 years. And what will happen in the next 10. The soul of your country called and left you a message. Seven messages. No Export to Europe or Australia.

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