Bill Callahan Shares New Single “Lonely City”: Listen

My Days Of 58, the new Bill Callahan album, will be out a couple months into the new year. The elder-statesman indie singer-songwriter introduced this LP with “The Man I’m Supposed To Be,” and he’s got an even better song for us today.

Like so many Callahan tracks, “Lonely City” is carefully constructed but seems to ramble at a casual pace, as if it’s unfolding spontaneously. The meandering, off-the-dome feel is a perfect fit for lyrics about catching up with a place after time away. Although the subject matter implies venturing out into the world, “Lonely City” still exudes the “living room vibe” Callahan sought after for this record, too.

His statement on the song:

Lonely City is a song I’ve been meaning to write for decades. It has been inside me that long. I tend to focus my writing on humans and the spirit within. So writing about concrete and steel felt like a no go. Like I’m going to write a song about a car next?

But of course cities are made by humans so they are human, too.

You have a relationship with them, like friends.

You get mad at them when you get a parking ticket, you love them when they offer you a nice meal.

It’s a song acknowledging all this.

Street photographer Daniel Arnold assembled the “Lonely City” video from 15 years’ worth of his own photos. Watch below.

My Days Of 58 is out 2/27 on Drag City. Shout out to Callahan’s fellow Texas transplants Eve Searls and Jerry David DeCicca, who sang backup and played tambourine on this song, respectively.