Although he's dropped the parentheses around the SMOG name that came with the three previous albums, it's tempting on the face of it to dismiss "A River Ain't Too Much To Love" as simply just 'another' album from everyone's favourite midwestern misanthrope Bill Callahan.
A cursory listen would suggest so, after all. Let's face it, everything's still based around Bill's forbidding drawl and finger-picked guitar; bass guitars are apparently still to be approached with the same revulsion Jack White holds for the satanic four-string varmints and - wait for it - things are still less than rosy in Bill's world: a place where a day in the life of Victor Meldrew seems like an endless stream of Tom & Jerry cartoons by comparison.
But, as always, such a premature dismissal would be a hopelessly rash move, for - given a few plays to allow Bill to fully unload his bulging sack of woe - "A River Ain't Too Much Love" shows its' true colours as yet another fine record and another unmissable instalment in the curiously singular Smog story.
Recorded at Spicewood, Texas's Pedernales Studio (the place responsible for the midwifery with many a Willie Nelson classic), "A River Ain't Too Much Love" is overall a starker, more stripped-down affair than its' predecessor, "Supper". OK, I'd baulk at using terms like "warm" where Callahan is concerned, but "Supper" was certainly largely a more rounded, group-sounding affair, while "A River..." is mostly hung upon an uneasy framework of Callahan's nylon-strung (and often exquisitely picked) acoustic guitar and dark brown baritone, which - as ever - is mixed precariously high in the mix.
Although opener "Palimpest" is typically stark - just Callahan, his guitar and the occasional yawn of harmonica rolling like tumbleweed across the set - it's still doesn't quite plumb the depths he once did on records like "The Doctor Came At Dawn", and its' curious, neo-mediaeval feel is something of a red herring overall.
More typical of the album's overall sound are songs like "Say Valley Maker" and "Rock Bottom Riser". The former opens with a classic Callahan line in "With the grace of a corpse in a riptide, I let go", before brushed drums patter tremulously and a female voice shadows Bill as he comes to the conclusion "Well I never realised death is what it meant to make it on your own" and the band queasily get hold of the final coda and make their presence felt. Presumably with the boss's permission. "Rock Bottom Riser", meanwhile, is quintessential Smog and a drowning-obsessed love song of sorts. Beginning slow and mordant, it gradually fills out with piano, more guitar and a dappled beauty not a million miles away from the best of "Red Apple Falls."
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Elsewhere, Smog tap into wonderfully ancient Americana for "In The Pines": apparently a distant re-tooling of the Leadbelly/ Louvin Bros one, while the (I imagine) ironic "I Feel Like The Mother Of The World" also sounds like something from a sepia-hued past with its' Neil Young-style upright piano and the band sneaking a naughty bassline past Bill while he's looking in the other direction. It's a trick they also manage on "Running And Loping", which - by Callahan standards - is almost a lighthearted youthful reverie, where our hero revels in "layin' off the pornography of the past....lightin' matches and droppin' 'em into a wet glass." Crikey. Sounds positively, er, idyllic, dontcha think? Whaddya mean "no"?
Typically, Callahan keeps a couple of further slices of dysfunctionally macabre brilliance in reserve for the home strait too. "I'm New Here"s title might suggest a sequel to "I Was A stranger", but its' initial doomily folky picking only barely disguises Callahan's mordant wit when he admits to a dallliance with a woman who "said I had en ego on me the size of Texas....but I'm new here....does that mean big or small?" Very funny. And delivered to perfection to boot. The closing "Let Me See The Colts" also straddles the beauty/ oblivion divide and builds to an uncharacteristically lengthy crescendo which suits it suprisingly well, although I guess dubbing it with the epithet "celebratory" might be a bridge too far.
So while you couldn't make a credible case for "A River Ain't Too Much Love" as any major stylistic step forward, it gradually reveals itself as a majestic stretch of water deserving of the customary respect and awe you'd usually afford a Smog album. Diving straight in might be rash, but happily sleeping with the fishes shouldn't be the end result either.
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