Snobbin: Beautiful Trash in the Pop Culture Gutter

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...

Cardinology takes a little time to appreciate. At first listen, it seems all too familiar, yet unsatisfying. Not dissimilar from Easy Tiger , the songs are pure pop songs yet they are more complex than those found on Easy Tiger incorporating more of Adam's love for the Grateful Dead with more dead-influenced guitar work. The power of Easy Tiger lay in its familiarity coupled with Adam's seemingly newfound direction and lauded consistency, yet after ten or so songs each song began to blend together leaving the listener appreciating the album, but remembering little of it. A few songs stood out, particularly the personal call-to-arms song, “Halloweenhead,” but overall the surprise element, the where will he go next element so integral to Adams varied songwriting, was missing. Cardinology may not be as consistent an album (there are a few misses, particularly the arena rock U2-aping song, “Magick”), but it does an amazing job showcasing Adam's songwriting, and more imp...