The last time I looked, the Half Moon was the smaller, more bijou theatre around the back of the grand Opera House. However, judging by the low lighting and the massive metal candlesticks that adorn the stage tonight, you'd be forgiven for thinking you were entering a place of worship.
But then, we ARE in a way, for SMOG leader and alleged furrowed-brow Chicagoan misanthrope Bill Callahan has been inspiring quasi-religious devotion (or should that read 'sevotion'?) for nigh on a decade now and tonight - in typically against-the-grain Bank Holiday weekend setting - he proves effortlessly why SMOG have burrowed into a black, but vital corner of so many hearts.
Flanked tonight by lead guitar, drums and (I think) Sarabeth Tucek on keyboards/ backing vocal foil, the surprisingly dapper Callahan strides onstage in lightweight brown canvas suit, adopts that strange legs-apart stance with his Telecaster held high and counts off the oddly glorious, country-tinged "Feather By Feather" that also opens the new album "Supper."
The band soon hit their stride, dispatching tunes like "Ambition" and "Morality" from the new LP with fierce precision and Callahan covering for the lack of a bass player with his bassy, percussive guitar style. To say it's anything like rock'n'roll even these days is pushing it, although songs like "Big Old Baby", with its' sparky guitar motif and the 12-bar crunch of "Ex-Con" do circle within throwing up distance, at least until you remember Callahan's singing about being "out on the streets", feeling "like a robot by the river", which brings us back to reality with the force of an anvil dropped from a thousand feet.
It may not surprise you too much to learn that Callahan's stage pronouncements are minimal. He offers a couple of stark "Thanks" and mutters the odd offbeat aside, though his unlikely suggestion for requests (yeah, really...) finds the previously reverent crowd flinging song titles at him like virtual custard pies. The ensuing "Cold Blooded Old Times" eventually booms out, sounding both vicious and victorious.
|
Typically, though, it's when Smog get all deathly slow and clinical that Callahan's muse strikes home best. Again and again it happens, not least during the funereal grace of "White Ribbon" or the utterly stillborn "Teenage Spaceship"; or during the crushing inevitability of "Your Dress". Watching Callahan cleave mercilessly into his own psyche is potent and morbidly fascinating - like observing a fatal car crash or being stunned in fear in the presence of a deadly snake - and while he does little onstage (except a weird, loose-limbed jig when things seem to be going well on "Dress Sexy At My Funeral") he has a hypnotic stare that screams "don't fuck with me" despite his inherently boyish good looks.
Marvellously, he finishes with the perennially brilliant "I Break Horses", with the band lashing it beautifully in a manner akin to the great Peel Session version from "Accumulation: None". This is Callahan genius in excelsis, ot least those great lines: "It doesn't take much, just a few well-placed words, and their wandering hearts are gone," which must be one of THE great rock'n'roll (term used advisedly) levellers.
It's been a long, intense, but infinitely rewarding decade plus for Smog devotees, with our hero graduating with honours from lo-fi bedsit loserdom to the reluctant alt.rock statesman he is today. Tonight's performance, though, was gripping, mesmeric and strangely celebratory: all of which shows that when it comes to delivering the black-hearted goods, the finest courier of all is still Bill Callahan.
|
