Alisdair Roberts

There’s an unrelenting intensity about Bill Callahan. He acknowledges the audience with only the occasional, cursory “thank you”, and even that seems begrudging. But hell, why squander words on pleasantries when he puts them to such fine use in his music. Compact and neat, with shirt sleeves rolled-up in businesslike readiness, Callahan makes for an unusually workaday stage presence. This is good. He knows it ain’t about theatrics and empty gestures, it’s about imagination and honesty, qualities he possesses in healthy abundance.

Given that he has only a percussionist and keyboard player for company, the sound is remarkably fully formed; Callahan’s guitar playing is precise, yet tender, constructing the stage upon which his dramas of the human heart are enacted. The set list is drawn, for the most part, from current album Woke On A Whaleheart with a smattering of songs from A River Ain’t Too Much To Love, his last record as Smog. What particularly impresses is the ease with which Callahan switches emotional gear – in the flash of a thin-lipped smile he’ll take us from the sly humour of ‘Day’ to express the most profound and forgiving love, ‘Honeymoon Child’.

‘Sycamore’ is remarkable, full of wearied knowledge and quite beautiful, whilst ‘Cold Blooded Old Times’ gets the loudest cheer, but both are usurped by ‘Rock Bottom Riser’. Callahan’s voice carries all the passion and intent of a deathbed confession, and the message is pure and unequivocal:_ “I bought this guitar / To pledge my love / To pledge my love to you”_.

Go on, beat that.