The Holy Grail: Bill Callahan’s ‘Smog’ Dec 10, 2001, Peel Session (Drag City)

Bill Callahan had released eleven albums and was still recording as Smog when he and his bandmates recorded a session for BBC Radio One's recalcitrant indie legend John Peel (RIP) - a rite of passage for any indie outfit. The four tracks here are bookended by covers of songs by Stevie Nicks (Beautiful Child, from Fleetwood Mac's Tusk) and the Velvet Underground (Jesus). Inbetween - and the highlights of the set - are versions of two songs from Smog's then most recent two albums.

Peel sessions were recorded in a matter of hours, so the unpolished sound keeps elements of Callahan's early, lo-fi work - although a couple of the arrangements show that live, Callahan, a powerful live performer, was already adept at turning his songs inside out ("You thought this was mellow? Check this out!"). As the new millennium dawned, Callahan was still in alt.country mode - mysterious, gothic and perverse, with murder and madness always lurking on the other side of romance. The pace is often funereally slow, though the band are also partial to a gradual build-up of tempo.

Callahan's mournful baritone, with its unusual inflections, is instantly recognisable. Beautiful Child is slow and stately, a gender-shifting meditation on the end of an affair. A violin keens as Callahan takes on the Nicks role and insists "I'm not a child anymore". It's classy, understated. Cold Discovery also starts off slow, a ballad of disenchantment as lovers realise they are not well-matched ("I had no soft place for you to rest"). However, the lyrics read like an account of an affair between two vampires - there's nothing wholesome about this unholy coupling.

Dirty Pants is the record's highlight, a genuinely disturbing tune. The exceptional lyrics tell of Dionysiac revels, amoral ecstasies, the obliteration of the self: "And so I dance in dirty pants / A drink in my hand / No shirt and broken tooth / Barefoot and beaming..." By the time our narrator has left the bar with '"Head... springing / blood ringing", let himself into the house of someone and backed them into the corner, we are cringing. This is powerful stuff indeed: Southern Gothic in excelsis, as good as the genre gets.

After the listener has been truly freaked, we need to end on a more reassuring note if we don't want to have nightmares. Nailing the religion/heroin crossover song decades before Spiritualized, a short but sweet version of the Lou Reed-penned Jesus ("Help me find my proper place...") provides some solace.

Overall, like many Peel Sessions, it's a mixed bag - but worth it just for Dirty Pants. 3/5