With her hiatus from music in the rearview mirror, Boston based songwriter Leah Callahan (Turkish Delight, Betwixt, The Glass Set) shows no signs of slowing down with her second full-length release in seven months. On this, her third solo album, entitled Short Stories, Callahan brings you into her mad world of outsiders, misfits and iconoclasts, including: fortune teller roommates (“Dawn and a Bottle of Wine”), fairy godmother bookstore owners (“Lady of the Lake”), intrusive oddball neighbors (“Tom and the Dog”), and hot mess bffs (“Neil the Dancing Girl”). Low paying jobs fill the daytime hours (“Spirit Haus”), while frenzied nights bring misadventures with indie celebrity (“Competitive Clara”, “Night at the Cooler”) and arty all night bachanals (“Party”). To round out these Stories, Callahan reverently covers Robert Palmer’s classic tale of jaded bourgeois - “Johnny and Mary”.
Although you’ll hear an homage to Callahan’s Noise rock past in the song “Night at the Cooler”, most of the album is firmly planted in indie pop territory. From the Gallic disco of Daft Punk (“Neil the Dancing Girl”) to Heart Like A Wheel era Linda Rondstadt (“Competitive Clara”) Short Stories is as indebted to AM radio as it is to college radio; indeed Lindsey Buckingham, The Pretenders, Joe Jackson, Sebadoh, T.Rex, and Of Montreal are all cited by multi-instrumentalist/arranger Alex Stern (The Sterns, Big D and the Kids Table, The Inevitables) as influences for the album’s sound. Once again Callahan has enlisted the team of producer/engineer Richard Marr (Midnight Creeps, Pile, Toxic Narcotic) with his in-house session musicians Stern and percussionist Alex Brander (Big D and the Kids Table, The Feel Goods).
Channeling some of the 20th century’s most respected musical storytellers for inspiration on how to best tell these Short Stories, Callahan describes her process: “I immersed myself in the music of a handful of songwriters in the months leading up to writing these songs, in particular these three: Elliot Smith, Daniel Johnston and Biggie Smalls. I wanted to challenge myself to write songs that were both subtle yet complex, so I researched Elliott Smith, analyzing ideas I found on YouTube and Reddit to uncover how he used progressions and chords. I also looked to Daniel Johnston, a writer once described as ‘incapable of artifice’ and tried to emulate his unstudied, raw lyrical approach when it seemed right for the story.”
“I was also inspired by several classic hip hop poets, in particular Biggie Smalls. Take these words from his song ‘Juicy’: ‘We used to fuss when the landlord dissed us. No heat, wonder why Christmas missed us’. It paints a picture of a childhood scarred by poverty in just three words - ‘Christmas missed us’. If I can paint half as vivid a picture on these Short Stories as he did with his songs, I’ve done my job.”
lyrics
After college I got a job -
It wasn’t much but it paid the rent -
I managed to mess up my fingers real bad -
From some nasty fungus the bottles had -
My old professor from Middle Eastern Studies -
She came in one day and she saw me -
She said: “well i guess it’s good for the environment” -
But she didn’t appear to approve of my predicament. -
Then one day a guy from Hampshire college came in -
And I told him his fancy bottle wouldn’t get him a dime -
He said “stupid people at stupid jobs”
But I think he meant poor people that time.
Bottle redemption department
Bottle redemption section
I worked there because it wasn’t too bad
But no one else seemed to agree
Bottle redemption department
Bottle redemption section
I worked there because they gave me a job
And it was pretty easy.
I don’t remember why I left that job
Maybe I moved away
It wasn’t the customers, it wasn’t the fungus
That made me leave my job that day
Oh now I remember,
I came into money
$4000 to be exact
From a bank account
My grandmother left me in the 70s
For me it was a lot
So I quit my job
And took up being rich
Mostly I went to bars.
I spent it all
Pretty quick
Them I left town.
credits
from Short Stories,
released October 31, 2021
Leah Callahan - words, melodies, voice;
Alex Brander - drums;
Alex Stern - guitars and piano, arrangements;
Richard Marr - producer/engineer.
Recorded and mastered at Galaxy Park Studios.
Copyright Leah Callahan 2021.
Sparkly Music, ASCAP
Just a Stern Songs, ASCAP.
Album cover photo: Pedro Blanco
Spirit cover photo: a dlt via Pexels
Known for experimental pioneers Turkish Delight US, critics’ darling Betwixt, and shoegazers The Glass Set, singer-
songwriter Leah Callahan navigates between pop and art-rock on her 2023 album Cut-Ups, which charted in the top 200 on North American college radio NACC200.
"beautifully strange record... lodged tightly in the gorge that divides avant-pop & art-damaged rock, elusive & challenging enough to puzzle & enchant even the most fickle listeners" - CMJ Leah Callahan
Oozes cool. There's a lot I could write about this, just listen to it. Between the amazing Skyjelly tracks and the darker psychedelic Solilians offerings, this is a wonderful release. A really beautiful record. - Limnetic Villains Limnetic
You know, this album, and particularly "Perfect World" give this sort of "your life is what you make it" kind of theme to it---all while being served with a very hip and catchy melody...personally I'm transitioning from #3 to #2 in terms of this song, and it only took 23 years! Aaron Jay Turkheimer
The members of Big Slice rubbed shoulders with Britpop legends like Suede & Echobelly—no surprise when you hear their radiant, hooky songs. Bandcamp New & Notable Dec 17, 2022