Smog Alert

Mere weeks into January and the first of the year's more intriguing musical curios gets beamed onto Planet Hot Press: namely Smog's Knock Knock, ten tunes that strike a delicate balance between nostalgia and backward-looking anger, spikiness and schmaltz. Smog are, to all intents and purposes, South Carolina-based Bill Callahan and friends, and this new work is a more lushly arranged piece of work than its predecessor Red Apple Falls, suggesting what the Velvets' Loaded might've sounded like had John Cale still been on hand to subvert Lou Reed's more conventional leanings.

According to the press release that accompanies the record, Callahan wrote five of the songs in one day, on an eight-hour drive from South Carolina to Maryland. "I stayed off 95 (which is the main road) and took as many small roads as I could."

Five songs in one car journey—even Springsteen would be hard pushed to match such a prolific work-rate. Is this true?

"Pretty true," the singer affirms from the other end of a transatlantic phone line. "It might've been four."

So what inspired this momentous rush of inspiration?

"It was sort of a year of not really having the opportunity or the privacy to work, and I got in the car and got away from everything that was inhibiting me, and it all just kind of came out."

What was inhibiting him?

"Just social interaction."

As you may have gathered, Bill Callahan is not the sort of man to squander syllables. Which is fair enough—he's in the business of writing music, not explaining it to death. Nevertheless, the idea of a guy flaunting the highway code in such a creative fashion merits further probing.

"I always think it's the motion, the movement that's stimulating," he expands, "and in a car there's no distractions really, no one can reach you on the phone. It's a sort of simple-minded task that leaves the rest of your brain open. I did intend to make a record that you could listen to in the car, sort of hoping that most of the songs wouldn't make you faint if you heard 'em on the radio. I dunno, I mean, I like Bob Seger and stuff."

The hirsute Detroit rocker is not the first reference point that comes to mind when absorbing Knock Knock. Indeed, certain textures on the record, like the looped cello effect on "Let's Move To The Country", go so far (or near) as to evoke the sophisticated minimalism of Philip Glass. But Callahan dismisses such associations with, "I don't have any great avant-garde roots or anything. I tend to like simple things. It's all I could tell the cello player to do!" Rather, the songwriter has described Knock Knock as an attempt to make an album for teenagers, even starting with the cover art, "with its lightning and wildcats—those seem like things that teenagers identify with. And the music is meant to have a similar appeal."

"I think that's a time where you're at the crossroads of life," Callahan reflects. "I think it's really a shame that people make their final decisions when they're so young, I think the feeling of possibility is something you shouldn't let go of."

With this in mind, even a song as vulnerable as "Held", described by its author as a "subconscious desire to be in love", could be second cousin to the comedic pathos of Jonathan Richman's "That Summer Feeling": cut grass, warm beer, all that jazz.

And speaking of cut grass . . .

"I'd been out of America and came back in the Spring to my house, and the grass was like five feet tall," Bill recalls, "so I'd go sit out there every morning . . . until the landlord called and popped my balloon! It was nice for about a week, I would eat breakfast out there and try to do some work and the cars driving by couldn't see me—it was a nice feeling."

Adding to the prevailing sense of innocent experience are the Chicago Children's Choir's contributions to tunes like "No Dancing" and "Hit The Ground Running".

"I thought it was a funny contrast," the singer reckons. "I mean, kids have their problems but to hear them sing 'Hit The Ground Running', there's a contrast of the adult running away to reach a sort of reasoned conclusion, and then the childish sort of fleeing."

But ultimately, the track which could be considered the thematic spine of the album is "Cold Blooded Old Times", a cheery but realistic antidote to rose-tinted retrospection.

"The important thing to consider about that song is that it's an upbeat anthemic sort of thing that (says) what happens in your childhood is important, but you can let it go," Callahan concludes. "Not to forget it, but not to let it rule your life. Hopefully that comes through, not simply just the tragedy of it."

Is it difficult to express such ideas in the pared-down language of rock 'n' roll?

"Naw, that's like the only language I can speak. I think I'm being complex, but it comes out simple."

Knock Knock is released on February 5th on Domino Records.