From 1988 until the recent release of Woke on a Whaleheart under his birth name, Bill Callahan, as far as the public was concerned, was the entity known as Smog. But Smog was not a person. Smog was a late-afternoon feeling of desolation, dread, and enchantment. Smog made brutal, no-fi tapes of acoustic musings pinioned by abrasive noise experiments. Smog's music brushed up against the misogynistic, the antisocial, the outright sociopathic. Smog was an enigma to be relished but never resolved. Bill Callahan, meanwhile, is a fairly traditional folk-rocker with a weathered baritone and a penchant for aphorisms. Could they be the same person? (continue at pitchforkmedia.com)
Bill Callahan performs September 7th at Highline Ballroom
