Dear Last Plane readers:

Songs occasionally come along at just the right time.

Been getting really into (smog) over the past couple of years — gradually, since Bill Callahan’s songs are more of the seep-under-your-skin variety than of the oh-my-God-I-must-have-all-their-albums-now variety. Picked up his most recent one, Supper, at a record store in South Carolina on the last U.S. tour. I really liked South Carolina – seeing it felt like meeting an old friend whose memory had been nearly obliterated by a motorcycle accident, all ghostly-familiar: it was so pretty and ancient-looking. But this has nothing to do with anything right now.

I put off playing the album until I got home from tour, and then I put it off some more because I was busy delving into the abysmally-titled Dongs of Sevotion, which is a masterpiece. And then it was time for tour again, and on the day before I left for Europe I transferred Supper to my iPod.

I listened to it one morning at a cafe in Paris. I know, I know — how insufferable is it to hear people talking about the things they did and the good times they had at cafes in Paris? Let a guy get his foot in the door with this kind of nonsense and the next thing you know he’s complaining about how we don’t have cafes like that over here, and how great the public transportation is over there in Europe, and then you just wanna punch him in the nose.

Well, let that be as it may: I was at the Cafe Nord-Sud in St. Ouen, having a cup of really delicious coffee and staring out at the street, and I heard (smog)’s “Our Anniversary” come lilting through my earbuds. It’s a subtle song, one with a little storyline running quietly through it, and I took but little note of it: two other songs on the album, “Truth Serum” and “Ambition,” hollered at me a little louder then. But just a few weeks ago I saw Bill Callahan playing his songs, and one of the songs he played was “Our Anniversasry”; and some of its lyrical intricacies began to become a little clearer, and then yesterday really was the sixth anniversary of my marriage to my wife, who designs this website.

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