Album Review: Bill Callahan- Have Fun With God

The take away from Bill Callahan’s “dub” album, Have Fun With God, after multiple listens, is this: while inessential, it’s not terrible, but really the kind of release that die hard Callahan fans need to pick up. It honestly is so inessential that it probably would have best been served as a “bonus disc” tacked on to his excellent fall of 2013 record, Dream River—a move that would have made the most sense, seeing as how Have Fun is just “dub” versions of the tracks from Dream River.

And when I say, “dub” versions, I don’t even mean like Mad Professor’s rather drastic dub reimagining of Massive Attack’s Protection. When I say, “dub” versions here, I mean that every track still pretty much sounds the same, and really the only discernable difference is in the use of delay and reverb on the individual tracks.

Prior to the release of Dream River, Callahan chose to release a 12” single of two of these dub tracks—“Expanding Dub,” which is an echoey version of “Javelin Unlanding,” backed with “Highs in The Mid-40s Dub,” an (you guessed it) echoey version of “Winter Road,” with the emphasis more on the electric piano when remixed, rather than on the acoustic guitar.

So in a move that really surprised nobody, Callahan announced in December that he had assembled dub versions for each of the eight songs on Dream River, saying in a press release about the record that: Dub is a spiritual, abstract, visceral, mystical thing. Finite and Infinite at the same time. Deeply rooted in the earth and embracing outer space. Don’t be fooled by names, Dub has come and gone. Dub is a ghost, a duppy. A duppy of a childhood guppy.

And it’s things like the inessentiality of this album, as well as that strange statement above that make Have Fun With God feel like a bit of an in-joke that nobody is laughing at but Callahan himself.

Like I said in the opening paragraph, Have Fun isn’t terrible. But if you’ve listened to (and liked) Dream River, the lingering question is “why?” What is the point of this album? At times, “dubbing” the tracks really does nothing to either hurt or help the original—and there are some interesting moments scattered here and there throughout the endless waves of echoes and cavernous reverb. On the version of “Small Plane” (the best song on Dream River) now called “Small Dub,” part of Callahan’s vocal is removed as he gets to the refrain of the song—I really am a lucky man, he used to sing, though now it stops at “..lucky m__,” one of the instances that, while attention getting, gives it a little bit of a cut and paste feel.

In Pitchfork’s non-review review of it earlier in the week, a bulk of the (short) piece was spent discussing the history of Dub music, dating back to its humble beginnings with artists in the 70s and 80s like Lee “Scratch” Perry and King Tubby—Dub, for those that are not aware (or did not read this thing on P4K) was a technique artists began using to create slightly altered instrumental versions of singles for use on the B-Side. By playing the just recorded track back again, various tape delay effects would be played live to transform the song.

It’s tough to say how much (if any) of Have Fun With God was constructed in this way, or if Callahan just has a working knowledge of the various effects available in a program like Garage Band.

One of the big reasons, for me, that this gets kind of a big “yawn” is that the structures of the original song remain almost entirely intact, and the balance between the song and the effects, which is primary and which is secondary, is walked a little too cautiously. On the “Summer Dub” (originally “Summer Painter”) Callahan lets the guitar freak out of the original get entirely out of hand—totally engulfed in delay until it becomes a wall of noise, which I’m usually cool with, but on something so reserved as a whole, the way Have Fun is, it feels out of place.

An artist with such a history steeped in Americana, alt-country, whatever you want to call it, a “remix album” is pretty much out of the question, or at least it’s not something you would ever think, “Hey that Bill Callahan song would sound great as a club banger.” I mean at least I wouldn’t think that. Maybe you would. We are different people. Anyway, Have Fun With God isn’t, like, a mistake, or a career killer or something. It’s just odd, and I think while it’s listenable, it’s the kind of album that I feel like my life would have gone on just find without hearing, and I kind of doubt it’ll be the kind of thing I’ll be coming back to a lot for a leisure listen.

If this interests you, or you just have a lot of disposable income to spend, Have Fun With God is available now on LP and as a digital download, via Drag City.