Bill Callahan Confronts Mortality and Legacy on ‘My Days of 58’
Bill Callahan performs live during a concert at the Admiralspalast on October 8, 2019, in Berlin, Germany. (Credit: Frank Hoensch/Redferns)
In many ways, My Days of 58 feels like just another latter-day Bill Callahan album. The tales of loneliness, horse-and-rider metaphors, and ascetic stoicism that permeate much of the material he has put out since abandoning the Smog moniker and recording under his own name in the mid-2000s are there. Yet, gentleness, empathy, and even wry humor break through in many of the songs here. It’s almost as if he cracks a smile on this record.
So how did a dark lord like Bill Callahan find himself in such a place? Firstly, My Days of 58 is a middle-aged album in many senses. It confronts mortality, and Callahan, who recently had a health scare, explores impermanence and dying in a lot of these songs. Fatherhood has also softened Callahan, and on songs like “Empathy,” the songwriter examines his legacy and impact through the lens of his young children.
Yes, middle age suits Callahan—who has always felt old before his time, which suited him just fine. It also allows him to drop aphorisms such as “It’s important to not treat your lifeboat like a yacht,” like an elder dispensing pearls of wisdom to the young. Of course, Callahan intones almost everything in an unsentimental baritone. This makes the irony of tracks such as “Computer” tough to pin down until the song breaks into its finale, where Callahan urges his audience to sing along with the refrain: “I’m not a robot / And I never will be.”
Much of My Days of 58 may feel like Callahan sitting in his living room and strumming his guitar. It’s a more intimate record than YTI⅃AƎЯ, Callahan’s 2022 album that saw him stretch out and rock a bit more than prior releases. However, many songs here go in surprising directions. Opening track “Why Do Men Sing” begins with a hushed voice and acoustic guitar before picking up into country swing of sorts.
Despite these more celebratory moments, mortality hangs over the album. On the opening track, Callahan dreams that he dies and Lou Reed is waiting for him at the pearly gates. Meanwhile, on “West Texas,” Callahan acknowledges that he’s pushing 60. And on the minor-key dirge-like “The Man I’m Supposed to Be,” Callahan claims he will, “From now on, I start living my life / As if the next day I’ll be dead.” In the same song, he sings, “We take life seriously, laugh in the face of death,” perhaps the record’s mission statement if there ever was one.For fathers and men of a certain age, My Days of 58 will hit especially hard. As Callahan asks, “Now I’m pushing 60 / With two kids of my own / I wonder what they’ll think of me when they’re fully grown,” those of us with children often ponder the same thing. If anything, fans of Bill Callahan will be impressed with this newfound introspection and vulnerability.
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