drag city
TRACK: Bill Callahan – ‘Ry Cooder’: a track for a legend, the penultimate ‘gold’
WE REALLY are that far down the line toward the end of the summer. Bill Callahan has released a track for Monday for nine consecutive weeks now ahead of Gold Record on September 4th, and we really are that close to autumn. His penultimate single drop comes in the shape of “Ry Cooder”: a meandering …
TRACK: Bill Callahan – ‘Cowboy’: whisky, water and whistlin’ our tired bones home
IT’S KINDA hard to believe that Bill has led us through the summer like an Americana pied piper, Monday by Monday, sprinkling the grey start of the week with a new tune for what … it’s been eight weeks now. Yep, we’re only three weeks away from Gold Record. Time grindeth relentlessly on. Today he’s …
TRACK: Bill Callahan makes it seven over ‘Breakfast’
DRAG CITY aren’t too far off the mark when they say that “over the past month, we suddenly love Monday … the best part of waking up is a new Bill Callahan song. He’s given us “Breakfast” today, a song with the ghost of Bill Fay’s “I Hear You Calling” preserved in amber somewhere down in its …
TRACK: Bill Callahan – ‘Let’s Move to the Country’: Bill out-smogs himself
BESIDES being a songwriter we should grasp close to our chests, we’ve seen time and time again this summer that Bill Callahan has an incredible capacity to surprise. First he goes and pulls a whole new LP out of the hat, Gold Record, laid down quickly and announced unexpectedly. Then – ka-bam! – he starts …
SEE: No Age – ‘Turned To String’: new video from low-slung noise rockers
SO LOOK, it’s not even news anymore: 2020, and the world is busy going to hell in a handcart. So just what is a scuzzily excellent, guitar-totin’ US alt.rock band to do? There ain’t no gigs; there no signing sessions. Hell now even the goddam pressing plants are backing up like bad plumbing. The answer? …
ALBUM REVIEW: Box of Chocolates – ‘Fearful Symmetry’: early Brooklyn stirrings from Will Oldham, et al
EVERY era of music has those great, lost nuggets which slip out, are adored by the knowing few, lost to the many; are whispered about and traded for ever-inflating sums until they break cover once more. It’s a cycle that can sometimes take a generation, as the actual chaff falls away to leave little beauties …
TRACK: A quintet from Bill Callahan with ‘The Mackenzies’: not a dry eye in the house
IT’S become a lovely little start-of-the-week tradition through the dead centre of this mournful summer: the Monday teasing of another new Bill Callahan track ahead of September’s Gold Record. And today he brings a tale of “The Mackenzies”: the sweetness of the chance encounter with a neighbour never met after his car gives up the …
TRACK: Bill Callahan makes it a Monday quartet with ‘Protest Song’
BILL CALLAHAN’S ongoing Monday afternoon pledge to gift us a song from his September Gold Record reached its fourth instalment today, with the downhome and evocative porchside “Protest Song”. Today’s is a bluesy, spontaneous and raggy fragment, with the meta-theme of being a protest song about a protest song on the television. “Somebody must stop …
SEE: No Age – ‘Smoothie Kings’: abstract shapes and lofi beauty
UNORTHODOX former Sub Pop noiseniks No Age have got through some virusy distribution teething troubles and finally their new album Goons Be Gone, their second for new housekeepers Drag City, is out in the world. And in celebration the duo, Randy Randall and Dean Allen Spunt, have released a rather lovely, abstract and colourful video …
TRACK: It’s Monday, it’s a beautiful third from Bill Callahan – ’35’
IT’S MONDAY: we’re in the groove now, and we know to expect a little nugget from Bill Callahan, as he previews September’s Gold Record track by track on a weekly basis. The third to be released in this way has everything you need from him. “I can’t see myself in the books I read / …