Rockbites: Califone touch down with Roomsound, tour US & Canada

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April 2001 • Rockbites Alternative Daily

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Califone touch down with Roomsound, tour US & Canada
25 April 2001

With Roomsound, Chicago songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Tim Rutili (ex Red Red Meat) has created a modern masterpiece with his acoustic blues-folk-slowcore-spacerock trio Califone.
    The new album, released yesterday for the US on Chicago indie Perishable Records, is the band’s first full-length as such; previous releases included two EPs and a compilation of them. The band (Rutili on vocals, guitars, piano, organ, synths, and bass; Brian Deck on percussion, synths, programming, bass, and vocals; and Ben Massarella on percussion, electronics, and bass) employ a small army of guest musicians including Doug McCombs of Tortoise, Brokeback, and Eleventh Dream Day; Rick Rizzo of Eleventh Dream Day; Gillian Lisee of oRSo; John Rice of Waco Brothers; and others.
    Roomsound (named after the technical term for the acoustic contribution of a room itself—surfaces, shape, construction—to what you hear in that room) is entirely seamless in its inventiveness. From the Neil Young signature percussive steel-string guitar that opens the set, wholly familiar and inviting, this record does not announce its wonder. But with a couple of blinks of the eyes, as the electronics and percussion and processed piano fold in, you are on another, slightly different planet.
    You can think of Califone as a chimeric creature, but not one that pops into existence bemused on the landscape and doesn't know its place; rather, one that has evolved over generations developing a healthy gene pool and consequently has a lovely and coherent set of incongruous features. New and strange to us, but it walks with the deep and quiet dignity of knowing exactly who and what it is.
    (Don’t worry. There is no such purple prose on the record. I’m just trying to evoke a bit of the feel.)
    The tracks on Roomsound are Trout Silk, Bottles And Bones (Shade & Sympathy), Fisherman’s Wife, Porno Starlet Vs. Rodeo Clown, Tayzee Nubb, Slow Rt. Hand, St. Augustine (A Belly Full Of Swans), Wade In The Water, Rattlesnakes Smell Like Split Cucumber, and New Black Tooth.
    The CD includes videos of 'Califone playing in the bathroom' according to Perishable’s Web site, which we could not confirm at press time because our advance copy didn’t include those videos. So you tell us if its true.
    Five bites out of five.

Rockbites ratings  5: life changing, 4: stunning, 3: captivating, 2: amusing, 1: annoying.

Califone began a major North American tour last night in Cambridge, Massachusetts, continuing through 2 June with a closer at Chicago’s Empty Bottle. Here are the dates

April
24 - Cambridge (TT The Bears)
25 - New York city (The Knitting Factory)
26 - Philadelphia (The Khyber)
27 - Washington, DC (Black Cat)
28 - Cleveland (The Grog Shop)

May
11 - St. Louis (Creepy Crawl)
12 - Memphis (Last Place On Earth)
14 - Dallas (Gypsy Tea Room)
15 - Austin (Mercury At Jazz)
16 - Houston (Rudyard's)
18 - Albuquerque (Launchpad)
19 - Phoenix (Modified)
20 - San Diego (Casbah)
22 - Los Angeles (Spaceland)
23 - San Francisco (Bottom Of The Hill)
25 - Portland (Pine St. Theater)
26 - Seattle (Crocodile Cafe)
27 - Vancouver (Starfish Room)
30 - Minneapolis (400 Bar)

June
1 - Milwaukee (Cactus Club)
2 - Chicago (Empty Bottle)
| Califone on Road Cone | | Perishable Records | | Roomsound CD from Amazon USA | | discography | | CD | | top of page |

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