Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle is right up there with his best stuff. I genuinely find everything since incredibly dull and monotonous.
Can’t agree re: his last albums. I really like Dream River & Apocalypse.
However, Happy Smog day… it’s one of my favourite holidays!
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Haven’t really gotten into his later stuff either, I listened to Apocalypse recently and it was fine as background music but only one or two tracks that I’d actually stick on again. I put on a track or two of Dream River a while back too and had the same thought.
Gave Sometimes I Wish I Were an Eagle a first listen this week though and it’s such a cut above those two.
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Definitely recommend giving Dream River a shot. It’s got some real sprawling psychedelic stuff on there. Flute and fiddle used to great effect too. It may be my favorite of his.
Got bang back into Bill since a couple of his from Apocalypse were on the Wild Wild Country soundtrack. In fact that whole soundtrack is great.
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Plenty o’ flute and fiddle sounds intriguing! Will deffo give it a spin now that it’s streaming!
Aha yeah I’m in the same boat! I’m up to episode four but after hearing America at the end of the first part, I’ve been on a bit of binge too 
Just out of interest, which tracks held your attention?
Great documentary… loved how Drover was used. And what a tune.
Yeah I love the use of the Damian Jurado song, really captures that serenity of life at Rajneeshpuram in the video montage. Thought this was a really interesting piece and mirrors pretty much how I felt.
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Enjoy the idea her husband has to pay for the privilege
Universal Applicant and Free’s are a bit nothingy but the other five are properly incredible songs imo. Quite varied too - Baby’s Breath, America!, Drover…
Riding For The Feeling and One Fine Morning both maybe suffer from being long contemplative ballady ones but they’re both great
Dream River grew on me a bit but it’s its one of his worst, agreed. Small Plane is lovely though
Cheers for linking the piece! Was just browsing through the soundtrack playlist and there plenty of artists to check out as I’m only really familiar with Bill Callahan, Kevin Morby and Timbre Timbre. Some great picks indeed!
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yeah i’d hesitate to say he’s got bad or anything but he’s drifted slightly away from the elements of his stuff that i liked the most
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tune.
i had to go back and check actually but i liked the opener, and the second track sounds pretty decent too. i can’t decide whether America is good or a bit annoying, but it’s interesting at least, i can imagine a more lo-fi version of it being on Julius Caesar. i think the rest of it struggled to hold me. i’ll have to give it another listen at some point though and see if i warm to it more.
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I get that they sound gorgeous, but I can remember very little about them once they’re done (I know, and like, Drover; and I vaguely remember a song about a javelin, but couldn’t name any others without checking).
I also can’t help drawing a conclusion based on the two times that I’ve seen him live. The first was on the Wish We Were An Eagle tour, at a church in Brighton. It was magical - heavy on Eagle material, but with a good cross section of earlier Smog stuff too. The second time was on the Dream River tour at the Royal Festival Hall. It was almost entirely Apocalypse/Dream River material; and remains the only gig that I’ve ever fallen asleep during.
That RFH gig was terrible. Although he did play Dress Sexy at My Funeral
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Listening to Starlite Walker by Silver Jews for the first time ever. Fucking great stuff.
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That new No Age album is fucking class, really selfishly glad that they decided to get all this stuff up on Spotify
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I bought it on vinyl the day before they put it up on Spotify, partly because I couldn’t easily listen to it. I was genuinely a bit annoyed for about a minute before I accepted that it probably meant more people would listen to it and it’s great, so good for them.
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I bought it on vinyl BECAUSE I heard it first on Spotify and decided it was ace
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And both ways No Age get the benefits of having made said ace album. So really everyone wins.
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