Extraordinary live document that takes the listener into the room. Magisterial!
The date is March 22nd, 2022. Bill Callahan is on the stage at Chicago’s Thalia Hall, flanked by Matt Kinsey on guitar, Dustin Laurenzi on alto sax and Jim White on the kit. And this is the result. Callahan wanted to record the night as he felt the songs were mutating fast and they needed documenting before he allowed himself to move on creatively. Sonically, live albums tend to be more of a one-sitting listening experience as the listener dives into the ‘event’ and this is certainly true of “Resuscitate” which has an all-enveloping quality driven by Callahan’s deadpan yet expressive baritone and the whirling rhythms of this exquisitely tight band. The listener is repeatedly reminded of another great live album, Lou Reed’s “Live Take No Prisoners”. There’s certainly less chat and swearing but the loose vibe, spiralling guitars and recurring sax motifs bring it to mind.
The guitar on ‘Partition’ is straight out of the Velvet’s playbook as the song drives forward relentlessly throughout its seven minutes. And this is a pattern that repeats and repeats. ‘The Drover’ similarly starts slow and then explodes into a churning, spiked rhythm as guitars ebb and flow and feedback washes over the narrative. If dissonance and sweet melody stirred into a gumbo is your thing then “Resusucitate” is a jewel glinting in a refuse pile, a shiny thing winking through the blackest of nights.
There’s real experimentalism here as Callahan pushes the form of songs and his audience’s expectations from one sonic plateau to another. ‘Pigeons’ is a delicate lullaby in the midst of the storm and serves as a palate cleanser between the howling and tearing of guitar chords which affords Callahan some audience interaction, limited as it is. This then leads into the reflective ‘Everyway’, another twisted ballad in which Callahan leads us through the shimmering darkness as strange sounds whirl and glide above our heads. The final track ‘Planets’ extends the form to breaking point as a gentle melody explodes into a cacophony of shronk only to emerge at the other end sailing sublimely on elegant guitar, shiny and reborn.
This is event listening. A tremendous album that showcases Callahan and his band’s musicality and experimental questing for the next thing. There are echoes of everything here, from the Velvets’ to Television and beyond all overseen by Callahan’s imperious, avuncular, benign but mischievous presence. Highly recommended but not for the faint of heart.
