Smog: Bill Callahan (vocals, acoustic, electric, Spanish & slide guitars, mandolin, ukulele, fiddle, flute, saxophone, piano, organ, bass, drums, percussion). Additional personnel: Cynthia Dall (vocals). Includes liner notes by Bill Callahan. Bill Callahan, aka Smog, started taping his music in the dark, lo-fi insularity of his bedroom/basement/whatever, and it is remarkable to see his songs finally come out into the light. THE DOCTOR CAME AT DAWN peels away about 20 layers of the gray-noise fuzz usually found on Smog records, to reveal a wondrous, emotionally-direct batch of folk songs. Welcome to the hi-fi bedroom recordings of the spiritually unstable (and tales thereof). The sheer voyeurism of Callahan's acoustic-guitar-and-dread approach makes it difficult to listen to THE DOCTOR CAME AT DAWN at times. But that's also a mark of craftsmanship. Minor details like the use of singer Cynthia Dall as a foil on the gentle yet biting Lize, the ambient synth that protrudes through every bit of Spread Your Bloody Wings, or the tempo stumbles and sweeping strings on You Moved In (a Tom Waits-like tale of destitution), enhance the terror that creeps between the cracks of just about every song here. In that way, THE DOCTOR CAME AT DAWN is more like a Tricky record than anything else.