Bill Callahan – “Coyotes”
How was there not already a Bill Callahan song called “Coyotes”? Well, there is now, and it’s his first public offering from the forthcoming YTI⅃AƎЯ album. “Yes I am your loverman,” Callahan sings gently over a lush acoustic groove spiked with jazzy post-rock touches. “The coyotes are getting bolder/ They come to watch the dogs sleep.” There’s a lot of talk about dreams of coyotes and loving and protecting your family, and basically every instrument in the band pulls off something subtly spectacular.
A statement from Callahan:
Coyotes — We lived for awhile in a house in the hills. Coyote hills. The coyotes would start their song at dawn. Dawn and dusk were their main appearance times. Our dog would sleep outside sometimes in the morning and our boy was still bite-size. The coyotes would come take notes, edging closer each day. Mornings on the kingsize outdoor daybed. Like a righteous floating tide the coyotes would drift into our world. Predator and prey, blurred. Past and present, blurred. The young, the aged are to be snatched and devoured. Past lives edge in closer to try to speak to us. Current lives eye the past ones like sleeping dogs. And love spans all, that is why the feeling is so deep — deeper than one lifetime.
It’s a great piece of music, so listen to it below.
YTI⅃AƎЯ is out 10/14/22 digitally and 2/24/23 physically via Drag City.