One of many phrases that Invoice Callahan makes use of most often on Resuscitate!, a stay album recorded in March 2023, is “goals.” We’re coming out and in of them on “First Chicken.” They’re locations of transmogrification, hazard, and in reality the last word actuality on “Coyotes.” “Dream, child, dream,” Callahan appears to advert lib on “Pure Data,” a track about pushing his toddler daughter down the road, now strengthened with the best lesson this wised-up dad might ever train her. It’s 11 years since Callahan launched his fifteenth album, Dream River, a file he supposed to be the very last thing the listener heard at evening, guiding them tenderly to their sleep state. Since then, marriage, fatherhood, and a brand new embrace of expansive pondering have taken the 58-year-old songwriter to a complete different metaphysical airplane. I typically consider stunning coincidences as being like an eclipse—two celestial our bodies lining up for only a second that you simply’re fortunate sufficient to catch—and Callahan has grow to be a stargazer for these moments in his writing, particularly as he observes the habits of his younger household; his melodies, too, have grow to be extra open, transcendent, reaching for one thing past.
That evening at Chicago’s Thalia Corridor, Callahan and his band attained a type of dream state, sounding generative and otherworldly. “The date was mid-point within the tour,” Callahan writes within the accompanying notes, “so I knew we’d be as scorching as we had been going to get. Not too inexperienced, not too brown.” (He additionally notes that he tries to work solely with venues, akin to Thalia Corridor, exterior the Stay Nation/Ticketmaster nexus, and possibly that freedom wriggles in.) In opening track “First Chicken” alone, Callahan, guitarist Matt Kinsey, tenor sax participant Dustin Laurenzi, and drummer Jim White voyage additional than most bands ever do in a complete set. It begins off sounding like a mysterious evening on the plains, filled with skittish life types, prowling bass, flashes of woodwind. As Callahan grows extra fervent, the devices vibrate with anticipation, after which come to tumble out and in of sync with their chief’s mercurial, deeply felt phrasing. It peaks with Callahan cawing “Tall! Tall! Tall!,” as if we had been that titular first chook; after six minutes, the squalling guitar propels a full-band tumbledown climax. Despite the fact that elements of this ensemble have been taking part in collectively for a very long time—and any group with White as its heart has magic on its facet—the telepathy between them is astonishing.
I noticed Callahan in London on the outset of this run, in November 2022, and as a veteran fan, it was maybe my least favourite present of his that I’ve seen. The setlist dwelled largely on his post-pandemic data, as this evening in Chicago did, with scant exceptions. I really like YTI⅃AƎЯ and Gold File as a lot as the subsequent one who loves pleasure, however why forsake your candy Smog kids! The taking part in was so digressive—the model of “Coyotes” on Resuscitate! lasts practically 13 minutes, and plenty of others run to round seven minutes—that I rued what felt like indulgence standing in the best way of the outdated classics.