BILL CALLAHAN - Ytilaer

"And we're coming out of dreams / And we're coming back to
dreams" is the first thing you hear Bill say as you remake your
acquaintance on YTI?A??. Right out the gate, he's standing in
two places at once: meeting up with old friends behind the scenes
and encountering them on the record, finding himself coming
round the bend and then again as someone else on down the
line. Like the character actor he played on Gold Record, writing
stories about other people, telling jokes about everyone, and in
singing them, becoming the songs.
"You do what you've got to do / To see the picture" Bill's got
a full band sound going on this one, with him and Matt Kinsey
on guitars, Emmett Kelly on bass and backing vocals, Sarah Ann
Phillips on B3, piano and backing vocals and Jim White on drums.
Jim and Matt sing on one song, too, and some other singers come
in, too. Bill plays some synth here and there, and Carl Smith drifts
in and out of the picture with his contra alto clarinet, as do Mike
St. Clair and Derek Phelps on brass. Somehow in between them
all, you might think you hear the distant sound of a steel guitar.
And you might-but you might not, too.

In this company, Bill continues his journey, tunneling under-
neath the weathered exterior of what seems to be and into the

more nuanced life everything takes on in the dark. With Bill's
voice making the extraordinary leaps and bounds that measure
the lives of the songs, the band follow him through passages that
seem to invent themselves; other times playing with deeply soulful
grooves and/or desperate intensity, as these moments come and
go. There's nothing they can't do.

Vinyl release of Bill Callahan - Ytilaer. Released through DRAG CITY and available on 2LP.