Califone - Roots and Crowns

Two major influences can be detected on the latest Califone disc, and neither of them is artistic. Fact is, both are financial. Following the last album, King Heron Blues, Tim Rutili headed to LA to do some soundtrack work. Seems that most o’ the other guys got dragged in at some stage, too. Shit, it pays the bills yeah? No more sweating over a long neck at three in the morning, trying to finish that existential couplet. Just get me some goddamn fine equipment and leave me the hell alone to put down on tape what is racing through my head. It’s just sounds, y’know. Filigrees and shadows, as This Mortal Coil would have it. Diamonds and rust, as Joan Baez would.

The second? During the last tour Califone had all their equipment stolen. Not just the guitars and amps and the microphones and the kick pedal etc, but even the pre-WW1 violin they had been lugging as a torch to bear in the fight against modern music. But it’s all gone, now, they shrug, in the light of a car park band meeting. We gotta move on. Get some shitty jobs, pool our resources, and see what’s what.

OK, I gotta tell you: the last bit of that paragraph was quite obviously me making stuff up. But it sticks: cos Roots and Crowns is so far left from what the band has previously done (either as their earlier incarnation Red Red Meat, or Califone) that you gotta be clutching at straws to claim it as natural progression.

Aurally it’s not far from the mark, but emotionally? I may be wrong (no need to call the evening news ‘bout that, I know) but this album seems like a smug game of guess the influences. I feel I should love it more. But when you spend the majority of the time lost in the footnotes, rather than the material, there is cause for concern. If necessity is the mother of invention (the band had to subsequently go out and buy all new equipment after some shithead junky pirated what they had collated to date) then let inventiveness be the mother of getting fucked over.

This album finds Califone truly searching beyond what they had know before. Eno-esque atmospherics, Telstar-like electronics, and an opening track which isn’t far off a post-rock rewrite of Sympathy For The Devil (and given Red Red Meat’s altar at the feet of the Stones, then why not?). Like I said, all good. But for a band who took beer-soaked melancholy to new heights well over a decade ago (as Red Red Meat), what does pissing around in a trough really mean?