Bill Callahan packed a lot of living into the years between Dream River and
Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest: He married in 2014, welcomed a son in 2015, and lost his mother in 2018. These experiences couldn't help but inform his music, and on his fifth solo album, he sounds like he's rediscovered the wonders of life (and death) and is primed to share them in a way that feels new to his lengthy career. Though
Shepherd is over an hour long, its songs are on a smaller, and more personal, scale than any of
Callahan's previous work -- instead of panoramas, they're family snapshots. These shorter tracks may or may not reflect how he balances being a husband, father, and artist (though "Writing" and "Morning Is My Godmother" sing the praises of sacred creative times), but they bring a riveting directness to his music.
Reflecting the growing wisdom of his songwriting,
Callahan begins the album by casting off the people and ideas that no longer belong in his life. On the smoky, three-minute long "Angela," he says a final goodbye to the kind of star-crossed relationship that, earlier in his career, might have inspired an entire album. On "The Ballad of the Hulk," he bids farewell to the suppressed anger and toxic masculinity of his "Bill Bixby days." From there, he marvels at the simplicity and complexity of life and death with a refreshing and thought-provoking lightness. These songs float with a free-flowing ease, turning what could be midlife crises into opportunities to grow and reflect.
Callahan's gentle musings on the nature of true love on "What Comes After Certainty" find him at his most literal and most spiritual (and, on asides like "I got the woman of my dreams/And an imitation Eames," at his wittiest). Meanwhile, his reflections on his mother's death on "Circles" and loss in general on "When We Let Go" reveal how the philosophical nature of his music has ripened over the years in aching yet graceful ways.
On each of
Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest's songs,
Callahan does a masterful and moving job of marrying real-life glimpses with storytelling on a grander level that brings out the essential truths of both. He grounds the album's music in allusions to
Lead Belly ("Shepherd's Welcome") and
the Carter Family ("Lonesome Valley"), includes Icarus and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in its cast of characters along with his wife and son, and envisions the cosmos among his wedding guests on "Watch Me Get Married." Most of all, the album's songs are connected by joy, whether it's the bustling domesticity of "Son of the Sea," the existential gratitude of "Call Me Anything" or the chance to tell his son when to wander and when to put down roots on the charming "Tugboats and Tumbleweeds." Unassuming yet frequently profound,
Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest is a gorgeous and much-needed return from an artist whose powers have only grown during the time he spent living his life. ~ Heather Phares