Heart on a Stick
Very Close to, if not actually in, the CD player:
seen/heard ° stream album ° buy
seen/heard ° stream album ° buy
seen/heard ° stream album ° buy
seen/heard ° listen ° preorder
seen/heard ° listen ° preorder
The Way You Shatter When You Hit the Water (Califone, Southpaw 11/10/06)
posted 11/20/2006
It’s been my experience that everyone readying themselves for time travel seems to forget there’s still traveling time involved. You don’t just squint your eyes or step into a transmat beam or hop in your TARDIS and *blip*, you’re there. Lot of distance to cover on that calendar. Sometimes it’s better to just wait.
What I’m trying to say, is: If you’re going, you’re going to want to bring some music along.
Might I suggest the latest Califone (myspace) record, Roots & Crowns? World music beats and back-porch blues fills lock arms with synthy static and otherworldly effects.
It’s music that’s always existed, sounds that have yet to be invented. Is that a banjo, or a sitar? Wherever you go, there you are.
The only other Califone record I’d heard, before giving this one a go, was 2004’s Heron King Blues; that one was mostly... pleasant. Other than the faux-funky “2 Sisters Drvnk on Each Other,” nothing on Heron worked to assert itself. Alt-folk noodling married with Tim Rutili’s hushed, dreamspun lyrics... well, you don’t want to fall asleep at the wheel, right? You might wind up sometime awful, someplace boring, somewhen you’ve already been.
Roots is simultaneously more varied and focused. It feels like there’s a plan. Instruments are allowed their full emotional range; there’s even, on occasion, a bit of threat to Rutili’s vocals. Experimentation, layered smartly within structure, rarely feels aimless. Should you find yourself getting lost, the band’s erected a little gem as landmark in the middle of the record.
By keeping it (mostly) simple, Califone essentially does for this early Psychic TV pop song what José González has accomplished with his electronica covers: They give it warmth. The original’s a lovely piece – and equally unlikely, given PTV’s own experimental tendencies – but it works in an entirely different way. While it’s not electronic – I don’t think – the metronomic regularity of the marimba and the understated vocals make it feel as if it is. No matter, this is an oboe showcase, of all things. We’re contrasting our klutzy, fearful inner voice with the joy and certainty of daybreak. Here, compare/contrast:
Psychic TV – The Orchids (mp3) (out of print? buy used)
The Califone version, with its inviting harmonies and hippie-dippy sleepy-stick, is more a communal waking. And that points towards what makes Roots effective: It’s immediate in a way that, not only can you almost reach out and touch something, but you’re sort of expected to join in and bang along.
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Which is, unfortunately, the opposite feeling I got from most of their show.
Options were the previous night’s Joe’s Pub performance – maybe the band could have used the lame-o dinner theater clinkity-clank to their advantage – or Southpaw’s usual self-absorbed din. And Southpaw’s closer. Other than as distraction, though, I’m not sure the band even considered the crowd. They seemed more comfortable turning towards each other and their instruments.
The basic band – Rutili (sometimes standing, sometimes seated) on electric 12-string/acoustic 6-string/keys/vocals, Jim Becker on violin/banjo (and I want to say both bass and 6-string electric, but it was maybe one or the other), Joe Adamik on percussion – came out and started looping together their first number. Unlike, say, an Andrew Bird or Owen Pallett, where every layer is logically added – or even the Grizzly folk, who can have two or three loopers at once, but everything’s open and obvious, so’s the audience can build their own bear – there was no attempt at sharing the process. Rutili was coughing, tapping into one or two different microphones, twiddling keys, laying out riffs. Becker shuffled between his instruments, starting loops, stopping them. So, that’s what it sounds like when you bow your banjo and run it through one of those effects boxes that reverses the sound. Maybe. And where’s that clicking noise coming from?
While the How of a show may not be that important, there was more alchemy than communication at work. When things were at their most indecipherable the best you could do was nod along. “And that, children, is how we know the sun revolves around the Earth.” If you say so.
Things opened up as additional players rotated through. Ex-Spinane Rebecca Gates came in (and out, and in again) to sing on a few numbers, and members of the opening act, The Judy Green (myspace), added more keys, a trombone, a trumpet.
The show wasn’t bad, musically. Not at all. I think there’s a danger when a band combines alt-country and electro-shizzle for them to sound like they’re spewing second-rate Wilco – a good part of Sparklehorse’s live Bowery show felt that way. But Califone finds its own sound in its own assured way. Watching them do so is just not very involving. Horns had mutes, strings had slides... it was much better when Rutili would stand up, face his guitar towards Becker’s and just throw out some licks. Fans would shout out song names – the band has apparently been off the road for almost three years – and Rutili would just shake his head back at them. He’d think, sometimes, for a bit and say, “Wow, I wouldn’t even know how to play that live.” Or something similar.
So very glad I stuck around, though, because the encore finally made sense – either they’d loosened up or I’d come around. I think it was on this song...
The sharpness of the snare rim, the psychedelic overlaps, the way the focus shifts as the thickness waxes and wanes. Every Califone song is some kind of collage, but this’d make a fine mission statement. This worked so well live because the song spends its first third finding itself, its middle third falling to its knees to twiddle knobs and fuck with feedback, its final third justifying its existence with simple, confident melody.
You could listen to that song twenty times in a row, never know exactly what’s going to happen, never feel lost.
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Try showering. (OMG)
YES? YOU THERE IN THE BACK?