All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

Mojo

Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle is a record of grand hopes and epic imagery, and powerful, uplifting music--the most accomplished of his 20-year career. [Apr 2009, p.102]

100

Delusions of Adequacy

He’s resonating some true beauty here; entirely lost in his nostalgic feelings and openly retrospective about where he has been, Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle is absolutely beautiful.

Read Full Review >

The Onion (A.V. Club)

What makes Eagle so strong is that the music stayed light, and those bucolic splashes of washed-out color contrast so well against Bill Callahan’s blues.

Read Full Review >

Paste Magazine

Eagle is the ultimate cohesion of Callahan’s singular storytelling and bewitching delivery.

Read Full Review >

The Phoenix

Callahan sprinkles his world-weary perspective with enough wry humor to make the album pleasant and endearing.

Read Full Review >

cokemachineglow

If "Woke On A Whaleheart" (2007) was the cuckoo clock, Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle‘s Callahan’s triumphant Renaissance.

Read Full Review >

Pitchfork

His vantage from Eagle is one of textured ambivalence; his images split and shimmer like double-exposures, immediately releasing an obvious meaning quickly followed by a subtler one that equivocates the first.

Read Full Review >

PopMatters

As if in an attempt to gain the attributes of the album’s namesake bird, the songs on Eagle feel like they’re rising on thermals, shifting and soaring effortlessly where the wind takes them. And occasionally they dive right for your throat.

Read Full Review >

Tiny Mix Tapes

The entire first half of Eagle shows Callahan as a much more evolved and mature musician. He appears more comfortable expanding his musical space, and he exercises tasteful restraint with Beattie’s strings.

Read Full Review >

Dusted Magazine

It’s that prickliness that makes this record intriguing, and durable enough to reward repeat listens.

Read Full Review >

New Musical Express (NME)

A quiet return to form.

Read Full Review >

Slant Magazine

Consistently literate and full of the comfortable resonance of his unique voice, Eagle once again proves Callahan to be as ageless as the forest.

Read Full Review >

The New York Times

The music is imaginative like a good dream--not the kind some of his older records intimated, the kind in which you’re walking but can’t move forward.

Read Full Review >

Observer Music Monthly

While the dewy-eyed mood of his last album, "Woke on a Whaleheart," suggested Callahan's romantic entanglement with Joanna Newsom had turned his brain to mush, this miraculous return to form finds the artist formerly known as Smog losing his girl, but rediscovering his mojo.

Read Full Review >

Uncut

Eagle is as good as anything he's ever done.

Read Full Review >

All Music Guide

It is perhaps a seminal new chapter in Callahan's oeuvre of higher yet lo-fi outsider music.

Read Full Review >

Prefix Magazine

This may not have any of the hard-hitting jabs his best Smog records had, but I Wish We Were An Eagle is a subtler, more bittersweet heartbreak.

Read Full Review >

Drowned In Sound

To that extent Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle seems like a return to older pastures--Callahan’s vocals again dominate, the production is more intimate, the songs themselves are again driven forward by the self-same rhythmic percussion and simple guitar riffs that became Callahan’s signature style over the last decade.

Read Full Review >

Austin Chronicle

2007's stellar Woke on a Whaleheart found him miles from Smog's lo-fi folk prophesies, the music revived, almost jubilant. Eagle's halfway there but sounds preoccupied, his stoic baritone never giving too much away.

Read Full Review >

Q Magazine

The overlong 'Faith/Void' aside, this is another absorbing collection. [Apr 2009, p.100]

musicOMH.com

It's reminiscent at times to what pal and label stablemate Will Oldham did on Bonnie "Prince" Billy Sings Greatest Palace Music.

Read Full Review >

Hartford Courant

The uneven Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle finds Callahan's knack for twangy crispness, pastoral imagery, and stone-faced singing very much intact, though he adopts a distinct growl to utter the title of 'My Friends.'

Read Full Review >

Under The Radar

There are moments peaking around 'The Wind And The Dove' with its gauzy Wurlitzer and "Thief Of Baghdad arrangements. Later, 'Rococo Zephyr' and 'My Friend' start in interesting places but slowly dissolve into the album's clunky tail section. [Spring 2009, p.65]

What Our Users Said

The average user rating for this album is 8.3 (out of 10) based on 18 User Votes

Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Joanna gave it a9:
One of the best albums of 2009 for me.

Grant MacMillan gave it a9:
Outstanding.

Andy j gave it a9:
river aint too much is still my favorite, but this is a great return to that vein of songwriting. "i was darker, then i got lighter, then i got darker again." Maybe in darker times, these baritone-voiced sages that some of us have loved all along will be a little more celebrated. with david berman retired, I really hope bill hangs in there and keeps making great albums.

Reuben Parks gave it a10:
Great Album!

Grubeck kafahin gave it a10:
Record of the year! Bill's best.

Music

Upcoming &Recent Releases

Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle

Album Info

Summary

What The Critics Said

What Our Users Said

Upcoming &
Recent Releases