Bill Callahan has announced the follow-up to his excellent 2011 album Apocalypse. Dream River is out September 17 via Drag City. The album was recorded at Cacophony, Tex., earlier this year. A press release calls it “easily the most sensual and soulful of Callahan’s career”; he’s also planning an extensive tour this fall.
Dream River:
01 The Sing
02 Javelin Unlanding
03 Small Plane
04 Spring
05 Ride My Arrow
06 Summer Painter
07 Seagull 08 Winter Road

Just uploaded it to the tube. - thank us later xx
Spin - December, 2012
In honor of the Mayan calendar and in preparation for the arrival of rogue planets, errant asteroids and/or hateful alien lifeforms
Last year, documentary filmmaker Hanly Banks accompanied Bill Callahan and his band as they toured North America behind Apocalypse, arguably the legendarily taciturn singer-songwriter’s most devastating (and certainly timely) effort to date. This fall, Banks and Callahan took to the road again to premiere her concert film of the same name, appearing in tandem for Q&As and brief acoustic performances in theaters on both coasts. And in preparation for tomorrow, a day that marks the end of one 5,125-year cycle in the Mayan calendar (also: time, the world as we know it) the two have teamed up to say a few things about their favorite disaster movies, all classics in their own right, but only a few as gorgeous and disarming as the film they made together.
McSweeney’s and KCRW present this radio drama in the style of Mercury Theatre’s War of the Worlds, featuring the music from the Flaming Lips, Bill Callahan, Okkervil River, Eleanor Friedberger, Nico Muhly, and Oneida. (Airs November 24 and 25 from 5-6pm)
Bill Callahan mix
Apocalypse doesn’t try to tell you how to feel about Bill Callahan, which makes sense since Bill Callahan doesn’t do that either.
Hanly Banks says some of her favorite moments of the film are when Callahan is around animals because it’s an accurate window into his character, “a literal manifestation of his whole philosophy and the idea of being open to the world.”
The soul-exposing, nearly 9-minute “One Fine Morning,” is another window into Callahan’s character: “And the mountains bowed down/ In the morning sun/ Like a ballet of the heart.”
Apocalypse was an ambitious undertaking for Banks, especially since she took on the role of director, editor and cinematographer. But with someone like Callahan as her subject, the film pretty much made itself.
“I went into [the film] with pretty abstract intentions,” Banks says. “Every time I would see something through the lens or in editing that clicked, it was like ‘Yes, this is the film I wanted to make.’”