Roots & Crowns

Califone | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (October 10, 2006)
• Original Release Date: 2006
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Thrill Jockey
• ASIN: B000H49P6O
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #88,415 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

The fifth proper album by the Chicago-based roots-loving group is their slowest, weirdest, and best. Some of these hazy songs are pretty little pop jams, while others are more experimental things stitched together haphazardly, all the wires showing. If you want to hear a group that "pushes the envelope" while never forgoing the pleasure principle, Califone is exactly that. It's so nice to hear people who could so easily form a (really good) jam band forego such lucrative tendencies for more foreign, complex, and subtle pleasures. "Black Metal Valentine" and "A Chinese Actor" are stitched-together Tetsuo visions of bluesy, futuristic post-folk, like some magical collaboration between This Heat, the Rolling Stones, and Vetiver. The superbly-titled Roots and Crowns is a pleasure throughout, and stands easily among the year's best releases. --Mike McGonigal

Product Description

Roots and Crowns. "Uniting where you come from - your roots - with what you strive to be or what you reinvent yourself to become - crowns," explains Califone's Tim Rutili. "At the bottom of these songs are the memories and images you sift through in the process." Imagery of rebirth comes up often on this CD. Limitations, obstructions, darkness, and the new possibilities they illuminate is what "Roots And Crowns" is all about. The LP is limited to 1,000 copies and comes in a jacket hand-screened by Tim Rutili. Califone have toured with Wilco, Iron And Wine, Modest Mouse, The Shins, and The Sea And Cake, and were invited to the Sonic Youth-curated ATP.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very easy to love, January 29, 2007

By 

Clancy - See all my reviews

This review is from: Roots & Crowns (Audio CD)

Full disclosure: I am a very big fan of this band's music. That said, this is their most accessible and easiest to love album to date. I struggle to say it's their best, only because Quicksand/Cradlesnakes is so stellar. One reviewer below insists it's easy to like, but hard to love. Oddly enough, I have the opposite opinion.

For any fan of ambient sounds, interesting arrangements, and evocative, textured instruments, I highly recommend this band's work. Throw Roots & Crowns on in the background a few times, and soon enough you'll be reaching for the case (or maximizing your iTunes window) to see which song it is that you're so drawn to. Before long, you will love this album. I have trouble finding the words to explain exactly why this music seeps so deeply into my brain.

If you are on the fence, listen to "The Orchids", "3 Legged Animals" and "Sunday Noises". If you like them, you will love this album. The songs vary from quiet, delicate, hypnotic tunes like "Our Kitten Sees Ghosts" to lilting, horn infused mid-tempo numbers like "Spider's House". If this is your first exposure to Califone, and you are typically drawn to more immediately accesible alt-folk like Wilco, don't throw this album on and expect it to wow you with clever lyrics and catchy choruses. Let it seep in gradually. After a few turns, you won't want to stop listening. It is infectious.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wow., November 6, 2006

By 

Antiquity (USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Roots & Crowns (Audio CD)

This could be my favorite album of the year. It is a mature, unique album that contains brilliant songs structured in subtle, complex ways, with melodies weaving between simple acoustic strumming and electronic interference. This is an album best enjoyed in a quiet room alone, with headphones to fully appreciate. I haven't heard any of their other albums, so I cannot compare it to their past work. In fact, I cannot say exactly who I would compare them to. Maybe Iron and Wine meets Tom Waits. But who cares, it is a great album and will no doubt be a fine addition to your collection. Give it a couple of spins when you are really listening, and I think you will agree.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If Joseph Cornell's boxes could sing . . ., October 26, 2006

By 

M. L. Williams (Georgia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Roots & Crowns (Audio CD)

they'd sound like this, narratives blown like an old transmission, parts clinking along the pavement, underwires pinging and cupping lasciviously, all sweet blues and sweeter decay. If you're familiar, Calfone improves on their already remarkable range, lacing horns into the loops, pulling a gem out of Psychic TV's catalog with "The Orchids." If you're not familiar, it helps if you like the slow surprise of a junk drawer opening, scraps of paper scrawled in pencil, that bolt you need, that tiny photo of someone you used to know. The lyrics are poems, the songs sublime.