Have Fun With God

Bill Callahan's well-metered, sophisticated, and subtly hilarious 2013 album Dream River was a glistening, understated experience. Its eight softer, drawn-out songs served as a gentle backdrop for Callahan's almost-spoken recitations and clever poetic epiphanies, and the entire set of tunes floated by in a Zen-like haze. A year or so later, the curious Have Fun with God offers up remixed versions of each of the eight tracks from Dream River, inspired by Callahan's love of '70s dub and Jamaican music and influenced deeply by the echo-heavy rhythms and splintered vocal treatments of the genre. Callahan's heady, lyrically focused songwriting and dub mixing treatment are a strange pairing to say the least, but not a completely awkward one. While much of Have Fun with God will be reserved for Smog and Callahan superfans, or those who loved Dream River so deeply they'd need to hear it in dub, casual listeners will find something to ponder in the mumbling percussion, deep basslines, and scattershot echo vocals of tunes like "Expanding Dub." ~ Fred Thomas