On Partition, his largely acoustic band settles on a droning, insistent two-note riff. Clearly, we are some distance from the Callahan the late comedian Sean Hughes once offered to introduce on stage with the words “miserable bastards of the world – welcome our leader”.Įven so, there are limits to Callahan’s mood of contentment. If, on paper, the latter reads perilously close to something that Ian Brown might bellow at you, it really doesn’t sound like it on record: it rolls breezily, joyfully along, complete with airy female backing vocals. He expounds on an esoteric brand of personal spirituality that enables us “to get in and out of what we’re living in”, imagines the spirit of his late mother watching over her grandson on Lily, and contemplates reincarnation and animism on Coyotes as well as the power of what he calls “natural information”, hymned on the song of the same title as a corrective to “two million years of data”. Music to rouse love and kindness and lift you up? Not so much.Īnd yet, listen to him on this album, employing his baritone to depict the simple joy of watching his son holding his baby sister’s hand, of hearing the dawn chorus, or seeing a pair of “little feet” sticking out of a pushchair. Lacerating pen-portraits and painfully acute fixings of romantic and existential woe? Most definitely. He was justly acclaimed – indeed, Callahan might be the most consistently acclaimed writer to emerge from the early 90s world of off-grid US indie music – but not for the kind of thing he’s talking about here. Rousing love and kindness? Sounds and words that lift you up? There was a time, not all that long ago, when anyone who knew Callahan’s work might reasonably assume any statement along those lines had been issued with a sardonic raised eyebrow.
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