Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle

Callahan told Uncut that he recorded the basic tracks with a band in August, then gave them to the arranger Brian Beattie, who wrote string and horn parts while Callahan toured South and North America. Back home they added the overdubs the old-fashioned way, with four or five string players gathered around one microphone. John Congleton engineered. The basic band was Jaime Zuverza on guitar, Luis Martinez on drums and Bobby Weaver, a friend of Congleton's, on bass.

Pitchfork's Brian Howe, who gave it Best New Music, called it an evident break-up record and listed its cellos, violins, French horns, pump organs and electric pianos. He noted that on Eid Ma Clack Shaw the narrator dreams a perfect song, writes it down in the night, and finds only nonsense words in his notebook the next morning. Mojo named it the second best album of 2009, NME placed it 443rd in its 500 greatest albums of all time in 2013, and Metacritic scores it 82.