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Artvoice Weekly Edition » Issue v6n17 (04/26/2007) » Section: Left of the Dial


Bill Callahan: Woke on a Whaleheart

For more than 15 years, Bill Callahan made his name under the guise of Smog. While it was never easy to pin down what Smog did musically, as he often swerved through various genres, the themes were often similiar. A monotone voice singing of deep despair, isolation and sexual perversion with a twisted sense of dark humor, Callahan could easily make a listener uncomfortable and awkward, which was probably the intent anyway.



Patti Smith: Twelve

Patricia Lee Smith is peerless. She’s made a career out of an impressive tightrope walk between conjuring mystic sorceress and streetwise boho punk poetess with perfect duality: never sacrificing either side of coin, never selling out. Smith has contemplated a covers album since 1978, she admits in the revelatory liner notes, where she explains song by song what went into choosing each track on Twelve. Smith’s always had an interesting relationship with covers. See her fire-and-venom take on the Who’s “My Generation,” retooled preemptively for the punk generation, and the refiguring of the snotty garage standard “Hey Joe” with an added ode to Patty Hearst and a nod to feminist power. A recent clip making the rounds on YouTube is a long-lost gem of Smith appearing on the otherwise square 1980s ABC children’s show Kids Are People, Too, where she takes the sappy ballad “You Light Up My Life” and turns it inside out in a striking performance, reanimating it with all the majick that Debby Boone drained from it. For all the due she gets as visionary writer in the rock-and-roll lexicon, she’s far less recognized as one of the music’s most potent interpreters. So, Twelve is really long overdue.





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