Red Apple Falls

This is the first truly great Smog album. Earlier albums all have some great songs, but suffer from content and/or sound quality. The worst songs on this album are good and six of the nine are great. Just listen to track one, four, or five. I can dig beneath tepid sound quality if the music transcends it, but the improvement here is important because of the sound Bill Callahan, who IS Smog, creates. The sound is still somewhat skeletal, but these bones have more flesh on them than earlier albums. The sound has more baroque elements, with pedal steel, french horn, piano and trumpet added to the mix. The sardonic, insular nature of Callahan is still present: The morning paper is on its way/It's all bad news on every page/So roll right over/And go to sleep/The evening sun will be so sweet. But the songs have a more expansive and stately feel. Callahan himself has said, "Red Apple Falls was...dreamlike, more about consciousness and what it's like to be a sentient being." Do not assume this statement implies arty pretension, for Callahan is nothing if not honest and authentic-you can feel it in his songs. As for this album, imagine Summer Teeth with a pared down sound, recorded by people just coming out of disintegrated relationships, taking downers and in an introspective frame of mind. If you find this album too stilted, try Julius Caesar or anything that followed it. None of the others sound quite as intimate or subtle as this album. If Callahan's evolution continues as it did here, he just might wind up as this generation's Nick Drake, though hopefully without his tragic ending.

Only gave 4 stars because this album isn't for everyone, and a 5-star review makes people go out and buy stuff. In this case if a lot of people did that, they'd be disappointed and would post negative reviews here.

I gave this album to an intelligent musician with great taste, and he said he couldn't get through it because it's too slow. So again, it's not for everyone. With that said, when this album first came out in 1997/8 I turned several other people onto it and it stayed in rotation in all of our collections for months and months.

It's a minimalist album, and it does unfold at Bill's own pace. But holy schmidt, pretty much every time you listen to it layers upon layers show themselves, and you're slack-jawed. A friend listening to him stammered with respect, "You just...you just can't DO that!"

Best listened to in fall/winter. It's the musical and thematic equivalent to bare branches sillouted against a bleak sky.

And it's a dark as hell album. Lyrically sardonic, self-observing, sad, removed, mildly sadistic, more than mildly self-loathing, resigned, anguished, amused and amusing, charming, engaging, self-deprecating, astonishingly witty, narrative-driven. Musically it's haunting, hypnotic, and quite beautiful. He's brilliant.

For example, the first track, "The Morning Paper," opens for several bars with singular, repetitive, dissonant notes on an accoustic guitar, against a dull low buzzing backdrop, and then Bill's voice, sounding tentative and slightly disoriented, comes in for just a few lines...his character wakes up logily and, not finding compelling reason to fully come to consciousness, capitulates to lethargy to "roll right over/and go to sleep/the evening sun/can be so sweet."

Then--still in the space of maybe 6 lines--introduces the concept of "this thing...Red Apple Falls," seemingly an allegory for the place his emotionally damaged and damaging protagonist had been in, in a complicated relationship where he behaved very badly, and basically now has the reaction of the scorpion in the scorpion and the frog story (when asked why the scorpion has stung the frog who is giving him a ride across a river, since they'll both sink and drown -- i.e., "it's in my nature...I'm a scorpion").

But many other reactions and ripples are revealed throughout the album, its stories, anecdotes, and side trips.

Some people have commented on Bill Callahan's lack of vocal strength or something...I disagree. This is a pretty emotional album. And Bill's voice is an expressive instrument. You won't hear his voice crack or eep out uncertainly or tiredly without it tying into the album's narrative. And often he sings in the monotone of someone still in the aftershock of whatever that trip into Red Apple Falls was all about.

Last note: I like other Smog albums a lot too--but this is my hands-down favorite--and have *not* enjoyed Bill Callahan live, at all, much to my chagrin.

I cant say that this is Smog's (Bill Callahan or whatever his name is) best work because like so many, I have really only discovered Smog in the last few months. Of the 4 records Ive heard, Red Apple Falls is the best. These songs are great and what's more... they are accessable. Much of Smog's early work was a bit formless and avant-garde for my tastes, but this borders on a straight ahead pop album.
Smog's songs in general are melancholic tales of the absurd, much like those of Leonard Cohen or Tom Waits. This CD is no exception. I would say, based on what Ive heard, that this would be an excellent place to start if you are thinking about picking up some Smog.