Located at the mid point between Lees Marvin and Harvey Oswald, Bill Callahan aka Smog aka (Smog) has established a reputation as a classic American Male Outsider. With 12 studio albums under his belt Callahan remains an enigma. A consummate storyteller in the tradition of Leonard Cohen and Kris Kristofferson Smog songs are car-wreck compelling, unsettling, unsentimental narratives delivered in an irresistible rich brown baritone. Whether accompanying himself on acoustic guitar or surrounding himself with crack musicians and producers Smog's sound is constant: the sound of a gold prospector ruminating into the night. Conforming to the loner mould of a long line of great American artists, Callahan radiates a peculiarly male energy: an unspecified kind of careworn rage, an acute sense of restlessness - his characters are horse breakers, ex-convicts, strangers. As an autobiographer, Callahan is a rogue trader with an unreliable commodity, a conscientious objector to the confessors club that constitutes singer-songwriting. Only an advocate of anonymity could write a song like I Was A Stranger, advise his listeners to Live Your Life As If Someone Is Always Watching You. His every lyrical move is impossible to second guess, his songs full of sonic surprise: the Casio baroque of Wild Love; the lush instrumentation of Red Apple Falls and Knock Knock; the choirs of innocents - Chicagoan school kid and cheerleader cadence - backing one of music's most mesmerising voices of experience.