Bill Callahan

Few songwriters have Bill Callahan’s eye for wry detail: “Like motel curtains, we never really met,” the singer-songwriter declares on “Angela,” using his weather-worn baritone. On his first studio album in five years—an unusually long gap for Callahan—one of the enduring voices in alternative music continues to pare back the extraneous in his sound. A noise musician and mighty mumbler when he broke through under the moniker of Smog in the early 1990s, Callahan now favors minimal indie-folk brushstrokes such as a guitar strum, a sighing pedal steel guitar, or simply barely audible room ambience. The 20 songs here insinuate themselves with bittersweet melodies and a conversational tone, and they’re a strong reminder of Callahan's dry sense of humor: “The panic room is now a nursery,” the recently married new father sings on “Son of the Sea.” But if he’s comparatively settled in life, Callahan still knows how to hit an unnerving note with a matter-of-fact ease.

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Joan Shelley returns with The Spur her fi­rst new album in three years. The twelve song set is a profound meditation on light and darkness, recorded in the spring of 2021 at Earthwave Farm in the Kentucky countryside. James Elkington serves as co-producer (alongside Shelley) and the album features collaborations with Bill Callahan, Meg Baird and the British novelist Max Porter along with Shelley’s musical partner and husband Nathan Salsburg.

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