Claustrophobic, disorientating and coming your way, Smog is the aptly titled vehicle for the rather vexed musical nightmares of Bill Callahan.
For almost ten years, Callahan has plundered the depths of his soul, ripping out missive after missive on that most troubling issue - the perversity of the human condition. (Always indulging in a wry smile as he flees the inferno, orgy or massacre, you understand).
Having said that, the grin on the perilously haunted 'Rain On Lens', seems to be tightening ever narrower, to a disturbed grimace, as Callahan takes his lo-fi blueprint to new depths of emotional disengagement.
So you get a harsh, almost hollow collection of songs, that are as darkly unsettling and violently disaffected as anything our rather self-absorbed Chicago-based outcast has committed to tape thus far.
As ever, the lyrics - worth your money alone - carry a crushing and crushed power. Indeed, within a minute of the album creeping into life, Callahan's quivering baritone has already announced "All is ruin. Let's call it a day". Quite a launchpad for the fun ahead no?
The general mood is of fear, paranoia and isolation. 'Keep Some Steady Friends Around' advises the 'subject' to create their own sanctuary, "like some kind of God. With a fence all around". Happily, Callahan, ever the ironic but sensible foreboder of doom adds: "Don't forget to put in a gate". Elsewhere, there is talk of futility, failure and a litany of hopes dashed, and, as such, it's spellbinding.
Musically, 'Rain On Lens' is a thoroughly stark, blackly electric, guitar record, relying heavily on strings to heighten and project the gloom and moribund atmosphere. 'Dirty Pants' is chronically edgy, building to a howling cacophony of perturbed noise, while 'Song' machine-guns a canvas of unyielding moods.
The aforementioned 'Keep Some Steady Friends Around', meanwhile, is strangely jaunty and hypnotic, again swelling to the tune of sawing strings, while 'Live As If Someone Is Always Watching You' is as unsettling as the title suggests, whilst underpinned by Callahan's staunchly comic observations.
And while 'Rain On Lens' lacks the variety and respite of its three most recent predecessors - 'Red Apple Falls', 'Knock Knock' and 'Dongs Of Sevotion', masterpieces all - it is nonetheless utterly compelling.
And at its heart of darkness courses the tainted mind of Bill Callahan.
