Califone
Roots & Crowns
Califone’s songs live in the spaces between their
music. For a band so dedicated to
silence and delicacy, when they comes, they comes with the thunder. From the opening drum warfare of “Pink &
Sour” to the throbbing feedback on “A Chinese Actor” to the slow burn of “Black
Metal Valentine,” Califone have never held onto the kind of exquisite tension
that abounds on Roots & Crowns. Their rhythms have never been so
relentless. Their blues have never been
so murky. Their lyrics have never been
so sharp. “It’s almost surgical/ The way you shatter/ When you hit the water,”
Tim Rutilli growls in one memorable chorus. “The Orchids”—a cover of an old Psychic TV song Rutilli rediscovered on
a forgotten mix-tape—provides a centerpiece that stands in contrast to the rest
of the album. As perfect a song you’ll
find this year or any, Califone play it mostly straight. Rutilli had just about given up music,
songwriting, and Califone at the moment he happened upon “The Orchids.” When he
sings, “And in the morning after the night/ I fall in love with the light,” at
the end of that song, he not only articulates his own journey out of darkness
and back into music, he makes plain the metaphor that gave birth to the entire
album.
-Marty Brown, 2006
For more quietly experimental, blues-infested dirges, give a listen to TV on the Radio’s Return to Cookie Mountain.
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