Bill Callahan - “Drover”
We’ve all seen enough movies to know that the cowboy, the lone horseman, the cattle driver (‘drover’ in the old parlance) is one of the most classically conflicted characters in American literature. He’s a grizzled man—hardened by years of life on the move, he carries with him a vague cynicism that spurs him to seek solitude, yet he remains keenly aware of the weight of his isolation, unable to completely bury his humanity in the dust and sweat of his work. “The pain and frustration is not mine, it belongs to the cattle,” sings Bill Callahan on this, the opening track of his latest album, perhaps salvaging a tough exterior by projecting his internal struggles somewhere else. He strums his guitar with a tense hand, remaining a quarter beat ahead of the drums, guitars, and violins that serve as his accompaniment. “One thing about this wild, wild country: it takes a strong-strong, it breaks a strong-strong mind,” he reminds. It’s easy to hear the first parts of this chorus—about wild country and strong minds—and mistake it for self-mythology without realizing that the whole thing amounts to an admission of exhaustion. And yet, like the old drovers whose ranks he joins himself to, Callahan is seasoned enough to know that it’s the only way his lifestyle can work. For him, anything else is a waste of time.
runner-up: “Riding for the Feeling”
