Album Review: Leah Callahan – Our Lady of the Sad Adventure

Opening your album with a track that clocks in at over six minutes is a brave move when even techno songs are ever shorter, but Leah Callahan pulls it off with style.

Fall in Love with your Mind introduces us to Our Lady of the Sad Adventure, the sixth solo album and thirteenth studio album from the Boston musician. It is also a great introduction to Callahan’s sound, one that encompasses a bewildering array of sounds.

The song is infused with 90s alt-rock and shoegaze and is far from revivalist: recent years have seen Callahan’s band from that era, Turkish Delight, undergo renewed interest and reappraisal for the role in shaping music of that time. Her subsequent band, Betwixt, played a large part in defining Boston’s art rock scene of that era.

It’s quickly apparent then that Leah Callahan is no ordinary musician, and Our Lady of the Sad Adventure is no ordinary album. That is reinforced by the second album on the track, Driving, which casts itself more to the 80s.

Driving has light colours of two of my favourite tracks: Roadrunner (Once) by Johnathan Richman & The Modern Lovers, a song about a highway in Massachusetts, and Back on the Chain Gang by The Pretenders. It doesn’t sound like a song that was put on tape in a matter of hours, given the way the arrangement, lyrics, and vocals interconnect as smoothly as a motorway junction. Yes, you can enjoy Driving as a song, but it is laden with history, conceptual without being opaque.

The title track is evocative both of Fleetwood Mac and the slinky indie sophistication of Alvvays and Yeah Yeah Yeahs. But then, it is worth remembering that this is Callahan delving into her own past, not taking cues from others. And that is something that occurs often throughout the album. You will hear elements of power pop, C86, alt-pop, shoegaze, and Britpop, but this is her past – and, more importantly, her present. She sets her own cues and comparisons.

There is another wonderful moment – on an album full of such moments – once it unwinds with its final track, I Remember. Molly Drake was sadly more famous for her children, Nick and Gabriella, than her own work as a poet and folkist, but here, Leah Callahan brings her own power pop sound to a track previously covered by The Unthanks and Tracy Thorn. It’s a testament that Callahan can take a cult classic, one already associated with iconic artists, and make it her own.

As an album, Our Lady of the Sad Adventure does draw from a wide variety of sources, rock and indie from the 70s to the modern day. Callahan has lived those sounds and scenes. Along with her long-term collaborator and co-writer on the album, Chris Stern, she has been part of some of them, which plays a large part in making the LP such an exciting and energetic collection of songs, one to treasure.

Our Lady of the Sad Adventure is set for release on the 1st of June and can be pre-ordered in digital format on Bandcamp. For pre-save options, and to discover more about Leah Callahan and her music, connect with her on Instagram or Facebook.