Bill Callahan - Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle

Belvedere Jehosophat - Sunday, 28 June 2009 - Print Version

To be honest, I only purchased Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle because I wanted to test Robert Forster’s thesis in his excellent “In Search of a Songwriter” essay/review for The Monthly. Briefly, his search for a songwriter is a search for a new genre, and one in which nature ceases to be the dominant muse.

The last Callahan record I bought was a Smog record: A River Ain’t Too Much to Love. It was after reading Forster’s review that I went back to that album and, sure enough, right there was that “neurotic and charged reading of the landscape”: in the title, in the Southern bird in “Palimpsest” and in the numerous rivers and horses that so frequently crop up.

I was interested in listening to Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle in the context of Forster’s essay, to see just how prominent nature was, which is, admittedly, a distinctly poor reason for purchasing a CD – and one which is rendered quite superfluous if you take a quick look at the inside of the album. What was unexpected, however, is just how good a record this is.

Callahan’s baritone is, of course, the major drawcard, and used to devastating effect with those lyrics of his: “I used to be darker, then I got lighter, then I got dark again,” he sings in Jim Cain; or his repeated “it's time to put God away” on the closing almost ten-minute “Faith/Void.” Repetition, in fact, is where Callahan gets a lot of his power. The build-up to the last line in “Too Many Birds,” and there’s confirmation of Forster’s thesis again, is an able demonstration:
“If...
If you...
If you could...
If you could only...
If you could only stop...
If you could only stop your...
If you could only stop your heart...
If you could only stop your heartbeat...
If you could only stop your heartbeat for...
If you could only stop your heartbeat for one heart...
If you could only stop your heartbeat for one heartbeat...”

Where Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle falters a little is in the backing music, in the accompaniment: the string and horn sections, for example, can sometimes sit a little ill-fitting Callahan’s barebones songs. Also, Jim White’s drumming is conspicuously absent and sorely missed, but that could just be from the perspective of a pretty tragic Dirty Three fan.

For the most part, however - and this is perhaps best exemplified in the coalescing of the Arabian-sounding strings/horns, the guitars and the vocal melodies on “The Wind and the Dove” - everything tends to come together marvelously.

Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle may not be the work of Forster’s new songwriter and it certainly isn’t of any new genre, however it’s a damn fine record nonetheless.

Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle

Belvedere Jehosophat