Bill Callahan – Shepherd In A Sheepskin Vest

“As you listen to ‘Shepherd In a Sheepskin Vest’, a feeling of totality, of completeness, steals over you, like a thief in broad daylight. Of course it does – you’re listening to a new Bill Callahan record! The first one in almost six years! For Bill, it’s a different kind of record. He’s now writing from somewhere beyond his Eagle-Apocalypse-River headspace, and “Shepherd In a Sheepskin Vest” is very much its own beast. The songs are, by and large, shorter, and there are more of them. It took almost all of the previous three albums to add up to that many. Plus, twenty’s a lot of songs! But again, it goes a lot deeper than that. After “Dream River”, Bill’s life went through some changes. Good changes – marriage and a kid – but afterwards, it was suddenly harder for him to find the place where the songs came, to make him and these new experiences over again into something to sing. While sorting it all out, he worked on songs every day – which meant that for a while, there were lots of days simply confronting the void, as he measured this new life against the ones he’d previously known. “Shepherd In a Sheepskin Vest” glows incandescent – an entirely acoustic arrangement, sounds and stories shifting seamlessly, almost like one big song made of a bunch of new stories – the kind that only Bill Callahan thinks to sing.”

2LP / Drag City