It’s fitting that the leadoff track from Califone’s 12th album, Stitches, is titled “Movie Music Kills a Kiss.” The Chicago band’s relationship with film runs deep, including frontman Tim Rutilli’s own foray into movie-making, All My Friends Are Funeral Singers, which was accompanied by their own original soundtrack. That cinematic bend also accompanies Stitches, which makes its own case as a potential soundtrack for a hazy, delicate western.
The album’s title, as well, is particularly apt – Califone sews together not only genres of music – electronic, blues, pop, and folk – but also all of those sounds within individual songs, creating a veritable Frankenstein with each and every one, usually inside four or five minutes. The magic part is that despite the tendency of lesser musicians to make something like that sound bloated or crushed under its own ambition, they pull off an album full of true beauties – meticulously put-together, sparkling Americana gems.
This winning combination is never more apparent than on “Moses,” starting out with dramatic strings that end up punctuating a thin acoustic guitar and piano, and ending in a moving orchestral crescendo. “A Thin Skin of Bullfight Dust” sounds almost like it could be a Broken Social Scene song, with a heavy driving beat provided by no less than five different types of percussion, along with poppy guitar codas and a muddled ending of confusion and feedback. “Magdalene” has a Beatles-filtered-through-Monument-Valley vibe. And the standout track, “moonbath.brainsalt.a.holy.fool,” is pure country beauty, with its pedal steel and droning electric guitar solo.
Stitches is a diverse and eclectic album, more than the sum of its parts. And it’s so well put-together you won’t even be able to see the scars. (Dead Oceans Records, califonemusic.com) Matt Williams