I’ve been a huge fan and follower since I discovered the brilliant and pulpy Smog EP Burning Kingdom back in 1994 and the next year’s LP Wild Love. My Days of 58 reaches those similar heights, always laid back, empathetic, loose feeling, and playful while teetering on the edges of loneliness and pathology.

It seems that drummer Jim White is appearing on every other album I listen to these days. His brushing and swiping style fits the record perfectly, just like it has for Hard Quartet, Cat Power, Courtney Barnett, Kurt Vile, and many others.

White is a key foil for Callahan’s vocals and guitar, but there are many other musicians who make this a special listen, with saxophone, fiddle, piano, trombone, and peddle steel all making inspired appearances.

Lead-off track “Why Do Men Sing” is a sprawling master class in songwriting, with soaring guitars and inventive female backing vocals. It’s an instantly encouraging sign for the record.

Then “The Man I’m Supposed to Be” starts eerie and slow, sounding like those early Smog releases. Callahan notes that he’s seen “that demon inside me.” With horns ominously tooting along, Callahan right then and there makes the case as one of our greatest pulp, not quite gothic, singer songwriters. I would rank him at the top of that category with Lou Reed and the deceased David Berman of Silver Jews and Purple Mountains, ahead of others like Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Leonard Cohen, PJ Harvey, Jake Xerxes Fussell, Cat Power, and Tom Waits. 

Callahan lives in Austin, Texas now, but he was born in Silver Spring, Maryland, where I lived for eight years, and spent his teen years in Maryland outside Washington D.C. So that shared proximity could be part of why I feel such an affinity for this artist. That said, it shouldn’t matter where you live. Get this record when it arrives on Drag City Records on February 27.