His riverbed pipes and haunted guitar glaze over the canyons between Lennon, Clarence Ashley, and Genesis P-Orridge.  Full text...

The root fed the crown through great release after great release of rustica maligned and re-aligned, electronics breeding in the canvas whites between fiddle and banjo and thumb piano and piece-meal percussion, and now with Roots & Crowns, Califone have a retroactive statement of purpose. Rutili still sings bound stems of images, but the music does more than uphold the point -- it encompasses and personifies it.   Full text...

It is old and new, dirty and clean, alienating and accessible, sweet and ugly, organic and industrial, doting and vicious. It is one of the most quintessentially American records imaginable.  Full text...

Roots And Crowns is a slightly more spacious and atmospheric record than 2004’s Heron King Blues. Largely led by acoustic instruments, it has an incredible air of restraint about it, as if everything was painstakingly constructed from a vocal jam downwards.  Full text...

Roots & Crowns may be Califone's "coming out" album.  Full text...

On Califone’s sixth album, the formula is characteristically odd. Computers provide dense textures, while a car sounds as if it is being vigorously dismantled. Fortunately, the songs are strong enough to withstand an avant-garde buffeting, especially Black Metal Valentine, a looming funk groove that becomes discreetly anthemic.   Full text...