Pitchfork

Funny what you'll stumble across while searching the net for beignet and strudel bargains. Just recently, we learned from the Califone fan site pastrysharp.com that the band has finished recording Roots & Crowns, the follow-up to 2004's Heron King Blues. The record is due out this fall on Thrill Jockey.

Top Califone chef Tim Rutili wrote to the hungry faithful:

"We worked on it in L.A., Phoenix, Long Beach and wherever we could over the last 6 months but did most of the work in Chicago with Brian Deck. It was great to watch Brian and [percussionist] Ben [Massarella] get giddy leaning into each other over the computer screen. Way better than old times."

No word on why the old times didn't measure up, but one solid, MP3-based rumor finds the band branching out to add horns to tape manipulations and kitchen sink percussion. Rutili said via e-mail that there were plenty of "new tricks and sounds", probably courtesy of standard Califone instrumentation like "dictation recorder," "prepared metaliphone," "pistons," "ribbon crasher," and "duct tape." Other contributors to the album include Michael Krassner and Wil Hendricks of the Lofty Pillars and the Bitter Tears' Alan Scalpone and Michael McGinley.

According to Rutili's post, the tracklist (subject to change, like pastries sent through the mail) may very well look like this:

01 Pink & Sour
02 Spiders House
03 Sunday Noises
04 The Eye You Lost in the Crusades
05 A Chinese Actor
06 Our Kitten Sees Ghosts
07 Alice Crawley
08 The Orchids
09 Burned by the Christians
10 Black Metal Valentine
11 Rose Petal Ear
12 3 Legged Animals
13 If You Would

Meanwhile, Rutili's been scratching his soundtrack itch, providing songs and scores in Elfman-like numbers. Upcoming work includes the score for Rank, a documentary about professional bull riders, which finds Rutili collaborating with Krassner and Hendricks under the name the Unseen Hand; it airs on IFC TV in September. Rutili also wrote the score and an original song, "Dreamless", for the independent film The Lost, based on a Jack Ketchum novel. The Lost's soundtrack also features the song "Dowser" from Rutili's old band, Red Red Meat, as well as cuts from Boris, Black Heart Procession, Baseball Furies, and the Black-Eyed Snakes, among others. "Dreamless" is available for free download from The Lost's website. And no, the movie has nothing to do with that TV show.

No laurel-rester he, Rutili also scored the television documentary Facing Life: The Retrial of Evan Zimmerman, set to air in June on A&E (otherwise known as Bill Kurtis TV).

Oh, and it doesn't end there. "Bottles & Bones (Shade & Sympathy)", from Califone's first album, Roomsound (recently reissued by Thrill Jockey), appears in the upcoming Will Ferrell film Stranger Than Fiction.

Finally, a live documentary of the band's 2004 tour of Europe and the U.S., tentatively titled Made a Machine by Describing a Landscape, is still in the works. Stay tuned for...well, just turn on your television or go to a movie, you're bound to run across something Califone related.