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Album Review
by SashaS
1-6-2005
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| Smog: 'A River Ain't Too Much To Love' |
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Smog: 'A River Ain’t Too Much To Love'
(Domino)
Smog: on a lookout for outlaw notes
Music business has been a clash of new and old schools for the past couple of decades. It’s been trying to resolve the same fundamental problem Hollywood faced before the psychedelic era. There were all these old honchos, who had been running studios since the silent era ended [or, before the WWII, at least] and weren’t going to change anything in the business believing the old system’s being just, fine and dandy.
Well, the fact is - it wasn’t and it ain’t. There is a new army of artists and fans-alike who do not care for the CDs, packages, obsessive listening to albums, regarding discs as artefacts and generally having discarded ‘collecting’ as a pastime. Songs have become as ethereal as the air we respire.
Music industry’s troubles started with emergence of dance music: the problem being that it was too instantaneous for the ‘Big Five’ to respond to demands of its fast turnover. So, they fell behind and have never recovered with the cyber revolution bringing in more uncertainty and loss of control to mark the beginning of the end of the major league.
It could be that we are witnessing the dismantling of the ‘big-star system’ that is replaced with ‘celebs’ and not realising it due to being bombarded by so much intel, faces, images, trivial exposure via ‘small-box’ reality… In effect, kitsch appears to obscure everything of any value… It is mercifully [albeit too infrequently] counterbalanced by the gems of the Smog [previously three albums came with parenthesis around the moniker] offering ‘A River Ain’t Too Much To Love’.
The world of Bill Callahan, trading under the Smog screen, is dark, elegiac and as deep sounding as Lenny Cohen and the late Johnny Cash on the couple of opening tracks - ‘Palimpsest’ and ‘Say Valley Maker’. Not that it gets much lighter later on but there appear to be little rays of sunshine creeping through the sonics. The pivotal song here could be ‘The Well’ with its countrified, mid-paced beat.
Verily, each song here is a journey viewing life from the side of the optimism that believes that things can only get worse. [And, looking at the political, economic and social settings in the world today - you gotta be blinded by propaganda, or be an American-born who‘s never travelled, not to see the world this way.]
‘Rock Bottom Riser’ continues in similarly stark, minimal and melancholic tone that embraces night [as well as a gloomy day] with passion of a lover, with lust of a celibate, with insight of a scholar. ‘A River Ain’t Too Much To Love’ belongs to the distinct group of Tindersticks, Cousteau and the inimitable Bad Seed, Mr Nick Cave. This is not a rip-off but an innate and expert examination of comparable emotional scope and vistas…
Alt-country in parts, wholly captivating.
8/10
SashaS
1-6-2005
Smog’s album ‘A River Ain’t Too Much’ is released 30 May 2005 by Domino
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