Snobbin: Beautiful Trash in the Pop Culture Gutter

There are days when I feel like I have told the same story to numerous people multiple times because I cannot stop dwelling on it. I have always struggled with letting things go. People tell me that I am too sensitive and that I just need to let things go. I battle with trying to forget the small injustices from twenty years ago, blaming others for being mean to me when they barely remember doing it. I think I tell stories to try to reorder my life and take control of situations that I cannot control. Of course, my inability to stop dwelling does not account for how I start forgetting minor details and adding others after years of telling stories. We all do this because memory is fallible and people like to entertain. The process of understanding what has happened to us throughout the years is hard to comprehend and understand, especially for those of us who have difficulty not dwelling on every detail. We blame others for the minor bumps in the road and we blame ourselves for im

Califone's Stitches fulfills their role as the ultimate purveyors of slow, experimental indie-pop songs that flirt with elements of incidental music and soundtrack collage. They seamlessly blend the elements of postrock and 70s singer/songwriter conventions, while developing a soundtrack that approximates the weirdest movie-fan dream.     From the first track, “Movie Music Kills a Kiss,” they navigate this landscape, creating music that pushes this aesthetic into overdrive. Tim Rutili sings “Karen Black forgets the words / Like Memphis when the rapture breaks,” painting a seamless merging of story and song in which their acoustic harmonics and dissonant noises create a perfect backdrop for the gentle lyrics. The title track begins with a smattering of electronics before new wave vocals creep in. The sweet intermingling of   voice and the backup vocals seems disembodied from the music until he sings “the Chinese opera shows the stitches.” Califone's lyrics resemble a mas