The Best Album of 2011: "Apocalypse" by Bill Callahan

"The real people went away..."

I'm delighted to have the chance to review this fantastically wonderful album at a time when it is still contemporary music. This is because, although countless good albums are released each year, very rarely do artists in the 21st century release records that feel like unequivocal masterpieces in the same way as important works of genius like "Exile On Main Street", "Illmatic", "Raw Power" or "On the Beach". The latter is particularly relevant to this argument, being a lean, introspective eight-track LP by Neil Young, not unlike "Le Noise"; my favourite album of 2010.

"Apocalypse" holds a similarly economic amount of tracks; seven. With the exception of Free's, a pretty song on Side Two, the songs range from five to eight minutes long. Callahan himself put it succinctly; "There were no extra songs. I'm not an amateur." Each song on the forty-minute album is crucial in forming the sprawling, beautiful, autumnal landscape it inhabits, be it the wistful balladry of Riding For the Feeling and One Fine Morning, the two tracks in which the central theme of "my apocalypse" is broached, or the ultra lo-fi, wickedly funny, folky noise-rock of America. The aforementioned song was the single from "Apocalypse", released with a psychedelic video, and rollicks along on a peculiar beat, ear-splitting electric guitar wails, and ridiculous lines along the, uh, line of "I watch David Letterman, in Australia" As the groove winds down for a brief moment, Callahan quietly confides that "I never served my country"

This is an all-American album. I don't have to explain why. You only need to listen to the cattle-like percussion of Drover to see the Appalachian Mountains rearing ahead of you. Drover, is, of course, the most striking, and best, song of 2011 and an unqualified moment of musical worth. The influence of Neil Young looms yet again in the juxtaposition of the guttural electric guitar and the folk-based, lyrical songcraft. There will be no better lyrics on the few genuinely great (as opposed to the still-prevalent very good) albums of the last ten or so years ["Kid A", "Blood Visions", "Le Noise", "The Blueprint", "Ghosts of the Great Highway", "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy" and a few others] than there are on the unremittingly gorgeous "Apocalypse" - and I say this having never given a Smog record or any of Callahan's previous solo albums a real listen. One of my best recent memories was, just after Christmas, driving along through the night with a close friend, baked out of our respective gourds, and knowing that a genuinely brilliant album was emitting from the car speakers.

"With the TV on mute,

I'm listening to the tapes

On the hotel bed

My my my apocalypse"