Album: Bill Callahan, Apocalypse (Drag City)

Apocalypse is Bill Callahan's best release in some while, sustaining a unity and intimacy of mood throughout. A Western song-cycle, it opens with Callahan as the "Drover", herding cattle and exulting in his "wild, wild country".

In "Baby's Breath", a romance slowly sours over a Lightnin' Hopkins-style cyclical blues vamp. "America!" is an iconic-ironic celebration of the country of Callahan's dreams, protected by "Captain Kristofferson, Buck Sergeant Newbury, 'Leatherneck' Jones, Sergeant Cash – what an army!" This rustic, allegorical fantasia finds Callahan communing with buffalos and bees, then coming full circle to where he has "no more drovering to do". The songs are cemented together by modest arrangements of guitar, flute and piano, wielded like watercolours.

DOWNLOAD THIS Drover; Baby's Breath; America!; Riding for the Feeling; One Fine Morning