Too Many Birds

Bill Callahan writes one of the strangest and most beautiful verses in his catalog in “Too Many Birds” — a six-line structure that repeats with one additional word each time, so the final verse of the pattern contains all six preceding iterations. It should not work. It works completely.

The song is carried by Callahan’s low, unhurried baritone and a small string arrangement that enters in the second half like light breaking through a curtain. It is a song about a person at the edge of deciding to stay. It is the sound of the cold morning when you finally do.