Smog, the alias of Bill Callahan, a superb architect of fatalist and oneiric atmospheres, devoted his opus to the paranoic exploration of an obsessive theme, the theme of a life that slowly fades away in nothingness. Smog identified so much with his poetry of loneliness that his songs seemed to lull himself into an intoxicating state of apathy and languor. Like Nick Drake before him, Smog conveyed the dismal sense of angst felt by one who did not want to live in a world that he did not love. With the brief, primitive and minimal compositions of Sewn To The Sky (1990) and Forgotten Foundation (1992), Smog experimented a format of gloomy litanies set to irrational arrangements that recalled Daniel Johnston. Julius Caesar (1993), instead, introduced a sophisticated composer and arranger, no matter how spectral and tragic the mood. Songs that ran the gamut from expressionist psychodrama to neoclassical lied, and often sounded like a rehearsal for Lou Reed's funeral, reached deep into the singer's alienation. The even more "mundane" approach of Wild Love (1995) refined Smog's chamber pop, the artist spinning his rosary of self-flagellation in a solemn tone, no matter how dark the catacomb in which he was buried alive. On albums such as Red Apple Falls (1997), Smog became a master of scripting soundtracks for an ordinary daily life: melodies borrowed from pop, country and classical music hinted at inner tragedies that never surface but simmer in absolute emptiness.
