Quite apart from its metaphysics, Woke On A Whaleheart pulls some nice musical tricks in the streamlined mode Bill Callahan favors here. “Honeymoon Child” works off the tension between common time and 6/8, throws in a gorgeous bridge, and provides the touch of ambiguity Callahan’s lyrics deserve. Some of this — “Sycamore” comes to mind — sounds like a version of the formalist two-guitar approach of Richard Lloyd or Tom Verlaine, and it’s impeccably performed and, at times, plenty slangy.
To these ears, Callahan comes across as a great pop songwriter who can get a little pretentious. Woke On A Whaleheart goes after home truths armed with little more than the mighty American triadic tradition, and while “From The Rivers To The Ocean” achieves an undeniable power in repetition, it strikes me as stolid. “Well, I could tell you about the river/Or we could just get in,” Callahan sings. Still, “Footprints” is great, simple rock — I’m being completely enthusiastic when I say this is sort of like Norman Greenbaum, or a really virile Neil Diamond performance — with a superbly employed female chorus.
Like the Silver Jews’ David Berman, Callahan tries to reach out to a country that might not be as alienated as a self-conscious, somewhat alienated American songwriter would suspect. His bemused, cold baritone puts across the mock-gospelisms of “The Wheel”, and he manages to undercut the sentimentality of “Diamond Dancer” (about a woman who “danced herself into a diamond”) with his command of the inescapable, and inevitably repeating, rock ‘n’ roll riff.
