Few solo music careers go back 30 years. In any other context, this would’ve been a remarkable feat, but in 2020 it reaches god-like proportions. Who would actually have the energy, after 20 albums released, to keep making music at the twilight of a decade filled with social turmoil and a year that has strengthen the flaws in our society? Well, that’s Bill Callahan, a soulful crooner from Maryland with a deep baritone that resonates like James Earl Jones narrating a documentary.

His music since 1990 has always been identified as a form of folk-rock, mostly just acoustic guitars, violins and gentle drums surrounding his unmistakable timbre. Of course what has set him apart is his penchant for tongue-in-cheek lyrics with poetic and sometimes fun musings in everyday life, love and well, everything. Also, in the late part of his catalogue writing as Smog, and in his first albums with his own name, experimentation with electric intruments, flutes, horns, and different percussions gave his music a beautiful sonic background, particularly with his free-form folky songs of unattached imagery.

His last album, 2019’s Shepherd In A Sheepskin Vest, is a stripped-back, long-winding acoustic record that found Callahan, after 6 years (oh, he did took a break), discussing his new settled-down life as a husband and father. Now, Gold Record continues with that aesthetic, being at the same time a continuation of that record and a brand new addition to this later chapter of his oeuvre. He starts the record singing: “Hello, I’m Johnny Cash”, both an exhibit of his lyrical whimsy and an introduction to his mid-life meditations. The track, ‘Pigeons’, is a stark tune of lonely arpeggiated notes in which Callahan muses about unrelated stuff, that somehow sounds relevant thanks to his steady delivery.

In fact, the whole album manages to immerse you in a long conversation with a wiser and older man than you. On ‘Protest Song’ recalls watching a young person trying unsuccesfully to sing a political song, sounding himself like a man that is just observing all this from afar. And that may be because he has new things to care about in his life. Those themes, of everyday life, family and overall stability are the ones that tie Gold Record with Shepherd in A Sheepskin Vest, however, this record its still a work of its own.

The music is more grounded, even if its equally contemplative. There are instrumental passages that hint more in a blues direction. Bill Callahan can easily embody the role of a innocuous man singing calmly to a few people in a saloon, specially with the rather familiar stories he tells. He takes time to call back to the past with a new acoustic version of ‘Let’s Move To The Country’, a song from one of his most celebrated albums as Smog. This version fits perfectly, and manages to sound even more on-the-road, with its repetitive low notes and melodic guitar licks. Thanks to this kind of moments the record moves forward, slow but steady.

Throughout, Callahan discovers himself ruminating his present life and using it to question every moment of its most nomral moments: reflecting in his marriage he states: “I drink so that we don’t fight, she drinks so that we don’t fight” but remarks that his wife still makes him breakfast everyday because she “Still loves me, you see”. In ‘The Mckenzies’, he says: “See, I’m the type of guy who sees a neighbor outside/And stays inside and hides” and in ‘Ry Cooder’ asks you to imagine how the celebrated blues guitarist would add a part at the end of the song “drawing all the listeners who tuned out right back in”.

That last lyric sounds like Bill Callahan acknowledges the fact that maybe, at some point, you left Gold Record in the background, directing your attention elsewhere, or maybe even paused it to concentrate in something you’re doing. That is, in my opinion, an inevitable effect of Callahan’s music, but this time around the sounds flow more seamlessly. This LP is a more effective affair than the last, but its hard not to give yourself to the crooner’s addictive rambling. If you don’t then you will most likely ‘tune out’.

There’s few artists this soothing that also demand full attention, a result of an excellent fusion of gentle, acoustic and detailed music and deceptively simple lyricism that treads a more profound territory than it seems in the surface. All is immaculately summarized in the first lyric of marvelous closer ‘As I Wander’: “I travel, I sing, I notice when people notice things”. Gold Record proves that Bill Callahan is a special kind of troubadour; one that uses his exhaustive wisdom to illuminate everything he sings and meeting his art in his own terms is an enriching and worthwhile encounter.