Split Personality Soup

Chicago quartet Califone took shape shortly after the breakup of leader Tim Rutili’s former band, Red Red Meat. On Califone’s 1998 debut EP, they picked up where Mr. Rutili’s former band left off, inclined toward grungy guitar feedback and heavy, galloping rhythms. While the noisy rock thread never disappeared entirely, two additional sides of Califone emerged in the next couple of years. One was the unplugged acoustic project, wherein Mr. Rutili rewrote depressionera ballads and blues. And the other was the subtle purveyor of gauzy atmosphere heard on 2002’s “Deceleration One” and 2003’s “Deceleration Two,” specializing in creaky improv designed to soundtrack experimental films.That’s been part of the fun with each new Califone album: You never know which band is going to show up. Through nine years and eight records for four different labels, the band has zigged and zagged at will. Its latest, “Roots & Crowns,” demonstrates finally that Califone can be all three bands at once. Here it has found a middle ground that fuses each of its personalities into a coherent whole.The key to Califone’s versatility, what binds the disparate styles together, is Mr. Rutili’s gift for melody. Whatever strange processing the sound undergoes and whichever primordial folk meter is being referenced, one can count on a lovely lead vocal appearing around the next corner.“Sunday Noises,” for all the detail of Brian Deck’s layered production — acoustic guitar, woodblocks, accordion, and a deep bass drum — would add up to very little without Mr. Rutili’s simple lullaby of a tune, which drips sorrow and remorse from every note.The midtempo shuffle “3 Legged Animals” might be even prettier, despite its harsher production and glances at the rusted-out sound of 1980s Tom Waits. Over a strummed acoustic, Mr. Rutili voices non sequiturs like “Hands fit together like medicine butterfly itch on a bottle” as if he’s communicating some ancient truth we all understand.That the song seems to be collapsing in on itself as these words glide past, with feedback escaping from a host of unnameable oscillators, only bolsters its power.Indeed, the consistently strong melodies are doubly important considering the relentless fragmentation of Mr. Rutili’s lyrics. He talks in pictures more than words, piling up loosely related symbols and allowing the resulting ramshackle structure to communicate on a subconscious level. “Catacomb wine, a Chinese actor loses heart” and “wire in the teeth while we warm twine while we breathe” are about as coherent as it gets.Cryptic words are something of an independent rock tradition, so they come as no surprise here. But Mr. Rutili has a painterly feel for imagery and an eye for detail that bring his weird scenes to life.Far from being an obstacle, the splintered poetry is perfectly appropriate for “Roots & Crowns,” which wants nothing more than to come over as a treasure unearthed in a junkshop. Everything about the record’s aesthetic — from the blurry photos adorning the sleeve to the opaque lyrics to the future/primitive production, where a lightly tapped paint bucket might sit alongside a sound that was carefully constructed inside a laptop — aspires to the mystery of found art.The tuneful foundation laid during the first two-thirds of “Roots & Crowns” pays dividends when the album takes an abstract turn toward the end. “Rose Petal Ear,” which finds Mr. Rutili singing in falsetto accompanied by plucked banjo, handclaps, and what sound like rewired Speak & Spells, is an eerie slice of pure mood, the notated musical content sublimated to the studio-as-instrument arrangement.The closing “If You Would” fades in with a wobbly organ and an upright piano that sounds as if it’s playing alone in a room somewhere during “The Shining”; when whispered voices arrive halfway through it sounds less like a last gasp and more like an encouraging little prayer before the next crisis arrives.The slippery drones and odd noises that accrue feel like a natural way to wind things down.Most surprising of all, “Roots and Crowns” projects a sense of hope despite the dark overtones. It’s the kind of album you can lean on when things aren’t quite right, a knotty old cane supporting that bum leg as you limp back home. It’s also Califone’s finest record, and one of the better indie rock albums of the year.

Split Personality Soup

Split Personality Soup

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