Califone - The Villagers Companion LP
Release date: February 21st 2025
Artist Information
- Label: Jealous Butcher Records
- Genre: Alternative
- Hometown: Chicago, IL
- Sounds like: Low, Hiss Golden Messenger, Yo La Tengo
Biography
“At their core, Rutili's songs carry a melodic warmth and innate sense of rhythm that makes them endlessly inviting.” – Rob Hughes, UNCUT
Califone is an acclaimed musical project centered around Tim Rutili and a regular and rotating list of contributors, including long-time collaborators; producer, Brian Deck, percussionists Ben Massarella, drummer/multi-instrumentalist Rachel Blumberg and producer, guitarist Michael Krassner.
Formed out of the Chicago band Red Red Meat, they've been exploring the tension between experimental noise, acoustic texture, technology, humanity, cinematic images and microscopic poetry since 1998 with over a dozen albums of sleeper hits and enduring classics.
Like a passenger riding shotgun on a road trip, The Villagers Companion offers its own unique perspective and story to tell. Featuring tracks recorded alongside last year’s acclaimed villagers, TVC captures the miles between the start and destination—the faded gas station pit stops, the plastic saint statue stuck to the dashboard for safe travels or luck. It embodies the essence of the journey without the burden of driving—the experience of the ride itself.
Companion takes us through the heart of Califone’s magic: reverb-drenched piano chords, electronic whirs, and layers of experimental noise. Guided by Tim Rutili’s abstract, fragmented lyrics—both strange and familiar—delivered through his warm, well-worn vocals, it creates an experience as evocative as it is haunting. Often passing through what seem to be the spaces between radio frequencies, the stations never meant to be heard. Crackles of static, feedback loops, and fleeting signals bloom into meditative moments, with each sound given space to breathe, unravel, and shimmer in slow decay. The result resonates deeply, transforming what might be noise into something profound, hypnotic, and totally immersive.
As with villagers, Rutili and company continue to explore what it means to get lost while surrounded by modern technology. Like a ghost in a machine or a whispered prayer stuck in a telephone line, Califone adds soul—be it damned or saved. And they do so with the kind of transformative magic granted perhaps only to artists a quarter of a century into their craft. The kind that turns a photograph into a tableau, or any darkened space with a microphone into a makeshift confessional. A song into a hymn, and a hymn into a soundtrack to a life.
It's found in the sparse junkyard percussion of "Jaco Pastorius," in the front porch bluesiness of the metallic slide in "Gas Station Roller Doggs," and throughout Nora O'Connor and Macie Stewart's sweet-as-sun-tea gospel vocals on "Every Amnesia Movie." And when they join Rutili in asking, "When have I ever given anyone what they want?" The answer is clear. The answer is: now, with The Villagers Companion.
