| Kicking a Couple Around | |
| Type: | ep |
| Artist: | Smog |
| Cover: | Smog-kickingacouplearound.jpg |
| Released: | April 29, 1996 |
| Recorded: | 1994–1996 |
| Genre: | Lo-fi |
| Length: | 19:46 |
| Label: | Drag City (U.S.) Domino (France, Germany, UK) |
| Producer: | Mike Engles, Steve Albini |
| Prev Title: | Wild Love |
| Prev Year: | 1995 |
| Next Title: | The Doctor Came at Dawn |
| Next Year: | 1996 |
Kicking a Couple Around is an EP by Bill Callahan (also known as Smog).[1] [2] [3] It was released on Drag City in April 1996 and re-released in Europe on Domino in 2001. "Your New Friend" was recorded during a 1995 John Peel radio session. "Back in School," "I Break Horses," and "The Orange Glow of a Stranger's Living Room" were recorded by Steve Albini.[1]
In an interview, Callahan said that "I Break Horses" was written "to help a friend try to understand how a guy she had a one-night stand with could possibly not return her phone calls the next day or ever again."[4]
Trouser Press praised “The Orange Glow of a Stranger’s Living Room,” writing that it "lets some lovely picking and piano pierce the warm gloom of [Smog's] abiding displacement."[1] The Washington Post called the EP "four delicate, downbeat songs that have a trad-country mournfulness."[5]