Quicksand: Cradlesnakes

Califone | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 18, 2003)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Thrill Jockey
• ASIN: B00008BL4Z
• Also Available in: Vinyl
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #16,796 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #24 in Music > Indie Music > Alternative Rock > Indie & Lo Fi

Track Listings

1. ...One

2. Horoscopic Amputation Honey

3. Michigan Girls

4. Cats Eat Coyote

5. Golden Ass

6. (Red)

7. Million Dollar Funeral

8. When Leon Spinx Moved Into Town

9. Vamping Again

10. Mean Little Seed

11. Slower Twin

12. Stepdaughter

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Dustbowl country, haunting percussion improvisations, and rugged rock & roll are roughly hammered together on the fourth album from Califone. Salvaged from the ashes of Drag City’s supremely haunting blues travellers Red Red Meat, this shape-shifting group--built around the core duo of Ben Massarella and Tim Rutili--is a hard to pin down. "Your Golden Ass" is an inelegant, leathery garage drone that sounds like the Modern Lovers collectively overdosing in an alley on the Lower East Side. "Horoscopic Amputation Honey" rolls mandolin, cello, and sparse electronics into an offbeat, yet oddly hymnal campfire sing-along, while "Cat Eats Coyote" is an on-the-spot foray into junkyard percussion and ghostly sax. All these stylistic skips mean that Quicksand/Cradlesnakes feels like a contradictory mix of city savvy and rural roughness, extravagant technology and salvage-store poverty. Anyone that felt Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot or Calexico’s Feast of Wire should have been more experimental will be well-served by this exploration of marginal Americana. --Louis Pattison

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Beautiful Noise..., October 1, 2003

By 

John Schacht (charlotte, North Carolina United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Quicksand: Cradlesnakes (Audio CD)

On Quicksand:Cradlesnakes, Califone combine(mostly) acoustic sounds with tape loops, synth sound and myriad percussive instruments, which has been their defining trait since the some of the members of this group made the last Red Red Meat record (There's a Star Above the Manger Tonight).

The result here is quite simply some of the most beautiful and intriguing music around because they get all these disparate sounds to coalesce into a seamless combination that makes the modern touches sound just as 'traditional' as the familiar instruments...

Quiet moments of Delta-like Blues, Appalachian country or Indie-pop explode into feedback-drenched overdubs and morph back again as the band obliterates the idea of verse-verse-chorus rock to create something fresh and transcendent.

Not to dis the other reviewer, but this sounds nothing like Wilco -- and I like both the band and their 'experimental' record, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. But YHF uses dissonance and synthetic noise to set up a clash with the traditional sounds of guitar, bass, drums, etc., whereas Quicksand -- like all of Califone's records -- manages to combine the two into an organic whole. It's musical alchemy, frankly, and Tim Rutili and Co. are wizards at this.

I'd also heartily recommend their entire back catalogue, too, especially Roomsound, their previous disc, and Sometimes Good Weather Follows Bad People (two out-of-print EPs plus two unreleased tracks); both work VERY well by themselves and will please anyone who enjoys the unique formula Califone may have perfected with Quicksand...

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars top of the list, July 2, 2004

By 

"indierockjunkie" (Madison, WI) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Quicksand: Cradlesnakes (Audio CD)

This is one of my favorite albums. Simple, yet complex. Gentle acoustic strumming with wonderful feedback in the background. How songs like "Vampiring Again" never get pub amazes me. Great song writing, great production, great musicianship. Califone has it all.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Let this one sink in, April 3, 2003

By 

Jonathan Scott "Wild Woodsman" (Jackson, Tennessee United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Quicksand: Cradlesnakes (Audio CD)

As good but not as immediately accessible as Roomsound. Listen to it 4 times before you even decide how you feel about it. It comes on like generic valium and leaves you with a smile on your face. The sound is a little more raucous than previous releases, but if you are a fan of the band; you must have this album.