(Smog)
Rain on Lens
[Drag City; 2001]
Rating: 7.5
Sincerity is way overrated. Those who seek out confessional truth and honesty
in music forget just how inane, obnoxious, and exhibitionistic most people
who are prone to confessional honesty often are. Anybody can go through the
kind of emotions that are all too frequently expressed with weak, dime-a-dozen
clichés. In many cases, the people with the most interesting minds are those
who keep themselves guarded, confessing only to themselves, and keeping all
their thoughts contained well within the confines of their own minds.
As a songwriter, Bill Callahan is about far from this type of confessional
honesty as you can get. Rather than telling you more than you could ever hope
to know about himself, Callahan's records as Smog instead provide a tiny
glimpse into a brilliant, interesting, and very guarded mind. Sure, a good
deal of Bill Callahan's music is dark to point of silliness, and obviously
not based on any kind of personal experience. But that dark, often immensely
witty silliness undoubtedly reflects a side of Callahan himself.
Last year's Dongs of Sevotion seemed to be a step towards a more somber,
sparse, possibly genuine sound. "Permanent Smile," perhaps the most moving
song Callahan has ever recorded, epitomized this, facing the very real issue
of death with wise resignation. As one could expect from an album with the
word "dong" in the title, parts of that album-- such as "Dress Sexy at My
Funeral"-- were darkly hilarious. But even with this underlying sense of
humorous insincerity, or perhaps mocking oversincerity, the album's close,
skeletal sound helped make it sound very personal. That grim humor is
certainly not the stuff of typical confessional songwriting, but one certainly
got a sense that it's the stuff of Bill Callahan.
With Rain on Lens, Callahan seems to have turned almost completely
away from more understated, tenuous sound of Dongs of Sevotion. Backed
by Eleventh Dream Day's Rick Rizzo and U.S. Maple guitarist Pat Samson, a lot
of the space that existed on previous Smog records is now filled. As a result,
the tension that once marked Smog's sound has seriously eroded. There's no
sense of a spatial void needing to be filled-- no sense of that odd,
claustrophobic nearness that can come from silence. Because of this, much of
Rain on Lens sounds remarkably detached, and the end result is an
album that, while musically excellent, lacks the impact of the pre-parentheses
days.
The first installment in a two-part title track opens Rain on Lens
promisingly enough. Reverb-soaked, trebly guitars ring distant minor chords
as a bare-bones drumbeat lends the song a subtle pulse. Strings echo the
guitars, as more wonderfully ambiguous guitar sounds enter the picture.
Callahan's spare, understated vocals lends themselves perfectly to the
track. Unfortunately, the briefness of "Rain on Lens 1" (a mere 1 minute and
27 seconds), doesn't hold up well against the more substantial length of
weaker tracks to follow.
And those weaker tracks come right away. "Song" seems to embody all that's
cold and distant about Rain on Lens, relying on an overly repetitive,
dense guitar and bass riff, with no real semblance of emotion or wit. Rather
than developing over time, "Song" just seems to ride along on the same
endless tick-tock beat and pentatonic guitar plunking. There's absolutely no
motion in the track-- nothing to make you wonder, or care to wonder, what
might happen next. Repetition can be a very powerful thing if it builds to
some kind of hypnosis or bliss, but "Song" in no way benefits from it and
comes across as purely boring.
"Natural Decline" suffers from some of the same problems affecting "Song,"
often relying for too long on frustratingly uninteresting repetition. Unlike
its predecessor, though, "Natural Decline" does brew some wonderful musical
tension. As Callahan deadpans, "Or is it just the natural decline/ Of the
body," the music beneath him shifts into a beautifully unresolved, relatively
dissonant chord-- a much needed moment of sonic conflict.
Both "Keep Some Steady Friends Around" and "Dirty Pants" are similarly
repetitive, but benefit from much stronger material. "Dirty Pants," more than
any other song on Rain on Lens, uses repetition to its advantage,
building a gritty minor chord dirge. What's more, the song actually undergoes
a significant change in the middle. Given the extent to which this enhances
the track, one can only imagine what some more dynamic songwriting could have
done for the album as a whole.
And when taken as a whole, Rain on Lens is certainly a good album.
While the music is at times distant and bland, there's enough goodness here
to make for an enjoyable record. What's truly missing is that little glimpse
of something else-- that extra bit of dark personal insight that makes Bill
Callahan's songwriting so interesting. Sincerity may be overrated, but
personality certainly is not.
-Matt LeMay, September 25th, 2001