Live Review: Bill Callahan

Listening to Bill Callahan is like driving through fog. Images and shapes occasionally materialise out of the vapour, dissolving into oblivion moments later. It's peaceful and quiet, and slightly unnerving. It slows down your clock.

The stage of the Drama Theatre was draped in rich red velvet, the lights down low. While Callahan held court, aided only by friend and colleague Matt Kinsey on electric guitar, the chaos of light outside in the harbour was a mute memory.

The show was as much built out of space as it was of noise. The spaces between notes weren't colonised by anticipation or suspense, they were just spaces, both meditative and satisfying. Callahan extrapolates meaning out of the simplest phrases (Hemingway would love this guy), and hearing them sans band was supremely effective.

The shifts in tone were subtle, and the show had the feeling of a slow moving stream populated with the occasional sharp rock (America!). His voice was as reliably velvety and strangely cautious as always, and as he unfolded songs like the Red Steagall cover I Gave Up Good Mornin' Darlin', his primordial baritone prickled the skin like unfiltered sunlight in winter.

Callahan is a funny guy. It helps break things up, hearing him joke about his birthday and the possibility of free Tim Tams from his expensive hotel. The crowd was mercifully free of awkward banter.

Jim Cain, Ride My Arrow and I'm New Here were masterful, even without the heft of instrumentation to rely on (although Kinsey added some fantastic atmosphere). It was an inspiring set, varied and deep, and the show, despite being short, felt nourishing, and the setting felt much more natural than the bigger stages he's played on here before.