Song of the Day # 1,255 Smog

Here's one of my very favourite songs of all. From Smog, which used to be the moniker Bill Callahan worked under for many year before he decided to drop the pretence and work under the moniker Bill Callahan instead. His is a very particular sensibility. Influenced by other things obviously, I'd put The Velvet Underground and Leonard Cohen as the core of where he started out from but with a clear identity and guiding personality all of its own, identifiable in virtually all his work, which could perhaps best be described as wry and stoical.

Here's the opening track from Red Apple Falls, one of Smog's best which came out in 1997. Remarkably, that's now twenty years ago. The song's called The Morning Paper. The morning paper is something which always arrives, (supposing you're in that small minority that still orders delivery of these things, it happened more back then). I think it's about learning to ignore what goes on out there and maintaining an inner vedic calm. Jolly good advice and a cracking downbeat tune, complete with parping trumpets. The kind of thing the indie fraternity does best.