Califone
All My Friends Are Funeral Singers

In the era of the mp3, where everything can be found and everything can be known, where a thousand listens are forgotten in the sterile bulimia that orders and creates end-of-year rankings, projects vanish as quickly as they were born: the risk is floating on the surface. I have pressed the brake pedal, finding a long-term reference point in artists who have developed their language slowly, brick by brick. The significance is also in the journey made.

There is nothing to discard in twenty years of Red Red Meat and Califone: countless chests full of minute emotions, a timid world whose substance is in the details, where little is grandiose and everything is nuanced and intimate.

Tim Rutili lazily sings unclear verses, carving images and melodies that seem like a metropolitan talking blues transfigured into a song. Percussions and synths create cinematic sound spaces, frames where possible Brian Eno and Neil Young draw soundtracks for western short films. And to think it all started with grunge.

But now it’s folk and electronics: replace depression in Wilco with meditative calm, pop with American roots. I simply adore the clattering sound of the slide guitar, it is the most recognizable sign of the bond this alien music has with blues and roots, with dusty lands and boundless landscapes, bonfires and stars.

Califone’s records are not masterpieces but good travel companions. As with other authors who have built and elaborated their ideas over many years, the latest work can be the best. Every time.