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.

Bill Callahan - "Baby’s Breath”

"She was not a weed, she was a flower," sings Bill Callahan in his simultaneously cold and affective, deeply toned talk-sing voice. The brilliant mind behind Smog returns with a new LP, Apocalypse, on April 19th via Drag City. On "Baby's Breath," the contrast between Callahan's simple finger-picked acoustic guitar and the sparse backdrop of a fleeting electric's abstract dissonances create a scene that is as beautiful as it is chilling. (Photo by Laurent Orseau)

Bill Callahan - "Baby's Breath" (from Apocalypse)