Smog - Knock Knock

I tried once, maybe five years ago, to get into the band Smog. Spurred on by my enjoyment of the single "I Feel Like The Mother Of The World" I decided to download some random albums of theirs (or, more accurately, his, because Smog is undoubtedly a one-man show), in this case Red Apple Falls and The Doctor Came At Dawn, to see if perhaps this was an artist worth obsessing over. Turns out that Bill Callahan (who is Smog, though not anymore) was worth my adoration, I just didn't know it back then, listening to each album only once before relegating them to the eternal abyss of the modern hard-drive.

After Joanna Newsom, Callahan's then-girlfriend, released her album Ys., which featured a Smog-guest vocal on centerpiece song "Only Skin", I briefly considered giving his work another chance. But it wasn't until this year's Bill Callahan solo-album (for he has, as of late, retired the Smog moniker), Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle, that I decided to return to the Smog catalogue and reap the many rewards that, it turns out, were always there waiting for me.

Which brings us to 1999's Knock Knock, my favourite-so-far Smog album (though I thing both Red Apple Falls and Dongs Of Sevotion are absolutely amazing, too). Rumoured to be (and certainly sounding like) a breakup album about Chan Marshall (a.k.a. Cat Power), Knock Knock is a harrowing collection of mostly dark, minor-chord laments on love and loss, often very slow and always very minimal. That isn't to say that the album doesn't have its moments of brevity, but even lighter and/or warmer-sounding songs like "Teenage Spaceship" and "Hit The Ground Running" deal with lyrical themes and ideas that are either mournful or troubling (or both), though with more hidden optimism than some of the more relentlessly negative numbers.

Lyrically, Callahan is ever-full of evocative imagery. Probing the coldness and isolation of mankind with a poet's keen and steel-eyed gaze. Not to mention that "Cold Blooded Old Times" is a title so good that it wouldn't seem out of placed next to the name Cormac McCarthy. Sample lyric:

Cold-blooded old times
The type of memories
That turn your bones to glass
Turn your bones to glass.

Awesome, eh? It's just too bad the song got placed on the not bad soundtrack-wise but awful film-wise High Fidelity OST. Bah. Oh well.

So kids, the lesson here is this: listen to more Smog. Or else, maybe, just don't write things off after hearing/seeing/reading/dating them once. Because sometimes the second (or third) time is the charm (and sometimes shit just sucks, but I digress . . .)

Oh, and there's a song from the album available for download below so no excuses . . .

Enjoy.

MP3: Smog - "Hit The Ground Running"