A Closer Look: Bill Callahan's "Drover"

In a recent article for the New Yorker, music writer Sasha Frere-Jones asked Bill Callahan—the cult singer/songwriter of Smog fame—if he'd ever "killed it" with a song. It's a silly question, but Callahan candidly responded, "I think I killed it on 'Drover.'" For anyone who's spent time with his latest masterwork, Apocalypse, and its opening track, the songwriter's admission simply confirms what we as listeners already know: "Drover" is a career-defining moment—a gritty and nuanced epic that leaves everything on the table.

The nearly 6-minute long track places the album on a bleak course with a lone frontiersman set against the task of controlling a herd of cattle. The drover here is left with nothing but his own thoughts and "dreams," the cold barren landscape, and the beasts he's burdened with protecting: "Don't touch them / Don't try to hurt them." The scenery here is colored with sparse brushstrokes: first with Callahan's own acoustic guitar, and then a tense build of clacking drums sticks, pounding bass drum, and jarring distorted bursts of guitar. The whole scene plays out as if on the edge of a knife, nervously shifting balance between major and minor keys and harmony and dissonance.