Roots & Crowns
The fifth proper album by the Chicago-based roots-loving group is their slowest, weirdest, and best. Some of these hazy songs are pretty little pop jams, while others are more experimental things stitched together haphazardly, all the wires showing. If you want to hear a group that "pushes the envelope" while never forgoing the pleasure principle, Califone is exactly that. It's so nice to hear people who could so easily form a (really good) jam band forego such lucrative tendencies for more foreign, complex, and subtle pleasures. "Black Metal Valentine" and "A Chinese Actor" are stitched-togetherTetsuovisions of bluesy, futuristic post-folk, like some magical collaboration between This Heat, the Rolling Stones, and Vetiver. The superbly-titledRoots and Crownsis a pleasure throughout, and stands easily among the year's best releases.--Mike McGonigal