Doctor Came at Dawn
Nothing in Smog's previous output suggests the austere beauty presented here. Previously, Bill Callahan (who for all intents and purposes is Smog) recorded half-finished vignettes that were held down by an excess of low-fi studio mud. Here, he slows everything down to a trickle (except "Somewhere in the Night" which positively rollicks along by comparison) and the leaky faucet of this doom seems to be unfixable. The deadpan basso-profundo delivery gets deeper over time as the nails of failure from each relationship are hammered in. The opener is "You Moved In" and rests as a bad omen. By the time of "All Your Women Things," Callahan is constructing a dolly from his ex-girlfriend's accouterments. Spooky.--Rob O'Connor