“It’s good to be back. Nothing has changed, not even me,” Bill Callahan quips from the stage of the sold-out Brudenell a few songs into Sunday’s performance (Jul 6)

He’s being too modest about his considerable evolutionary capacity.

Coinciding roughly with Callahan retiring the Smog moniker to release records under his own name instead, the Texas-based songwriter has gradually moved from the all-enveloping darkness and gnomically unsettling utterances of his early cult classics to a mode of expression that is warmer, wiser, perhaps more substantial and emotionally resonant, and certainly more relatable, with a certain bone-dry wit and consistently high levels of inspiration uniting these two strands of songwriting.

“I used to be darker, then I got lighter,” as Callahan states in Jim Cain (off 2009’s Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle) which opens tonight’s 100-minute set.

There have been more recent changes to the presentation, too. When Callahan last visited the Brudenell shortly after the release of his most recent studio album, 2022’s excellent and heroically idiosyncratic YTILAER (‘reality’ backwards), it was with a sax-enhanced trio presumably under instructions to be as noisy and sprawling as possible.

Instead of the ensuing stretched-out impromptu jams, Callahan is on his lonesome on the Brudenell stage tonight, with only the bass pedal and cymbal he’s operating with his feet to accompany his electric guitar and gravitas-laden conversational baritone voice that continues to give every impression of having been carved from granite and left out to dry under the merciless sun of the desert.

What follows is a judiciously picked cruise through Callahan’s back catalogue, executed with an exploratory and playful spirit that defies staid solo singer-songwriter conventions.

An early highlight arrives with a rearranged Smog classic Cold Blooded Old Times, presented as a solo guitar interpretation of the irrepressible choogle of Velvet Underground’s Live 1969.

Equally intense but for other reasons, the rarely aired Red Apples from 1997 is a skeletally arranged, spooky dark fairytale trek through an enchanted forest, danger lurking behind every tree.

Thematically almost unrecognisable but unmistakably the work of the same songwriter, the meaningfully meandering Coyotes moves from speculating on the inner life of a family dog to declarations of undying love (“holding hands through many lives”) as the tempo and level of musical assertiveness shifts erratically but purposely in line with Callahan’s recital.

It’s beautiful stuff, as is the loss-tinged 747, off 2019’s Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest, possibly the finest of Callahan’s recent run of albums.

“Anyone else want to sign a song?”, Callahan enquires at one point.

With performances as strong as a joyous and unexpectedly funky (especially for a solo show) gallop through the self-help mantras of Partition (another highlight of the evening) the answer can only be a resounding no.

At the start of the encores, Callahan asks for requests, resulting in approximately twenty titles being yelled out by the faithful at once.

Callahan picks the beautifully sparse Rock Bottom Riser off 2005’s final Smog album A River Ain’t Too Much To Love, as near to a dividing line between the darkness and light in Callahan’s catalogue as is possible to identity.

It’s a beautiful end to a thoroughly compelling evening in the company of one of the most original and consistently inspired songwriters the US has to offer.