Customer Reviews

All My Friends Are Funeral Singers

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3 star:		(3)
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This is the kind of CD that reinvigorates the album as a relevant form, as its accomplishment builds with repeated listening. Tim Rutili is one of the most underrated singer-songwriters in indie music, and his phrase montages build to create an atmosphere out of the ghosts of America's secret vocabulary. With All My Friends Are Funeral Singers, the band achieves a mature, fully realized project, blending cooling Studebaker radiator syncopation with ball-peen hammer percussion, found noise and odd instruments underpinned by blues-folk string virtuosity and more than a few fine pop hooks.

At the risk of sounding pretentious, this album is sublime. This is possibly their most refined and on-point project yet. Like all Califone albums, it blows you away on the first listen, and only gets better with each successive listen. I've had it for about two weeks now and I'm finding it hard to tear myself away to listen to anything else.

As luck would have it, they're coming through Missoula on Feb. 7. To hell with the Super Bowl, I get to see Califone!

There is no one who sounds like Califone. And it is better as a whole album. So strange and confident, so unconscious of what might be hip or snag obvious attention. The lyrics are wonderful, the music constantly surprising and right. I daresay: better than Beck.

Compared with Califone's earlier albums, this is only a good effort, sounding a bit too familiar, almost muted following Roots and Crowns. However, even an only good work from Califone still makes it one of the better albums of the year.

These warped westerners keep things interesting enough but seem to have become mired in their own sonic minutia at the expense of writing material that matters.

While most WOULD hop off a chair, most WON'T because the thrill is, well, all but non-existent.

Most humans will never bungee jump because the of the risk, though many still will. And those that do, will likely only do it only once because after that what's the point. A fraction will go again, even fewer will go a third time, and a negligible (though dedicated) amount will take the leap at every opportunity.

Anyway, back to the chair. It's safe, but unexciting. A base, almost ironic, thrill COULD be attributed to the event. But, really, if you're the type who makes time and looks forward to jumping off chairs, then you are your own special, quirky you.

More power to you.