Califone: burnin' in the basement

Califone is a band containing four holdovers from the infamous Chicago country-blues group Red Red Meat. Doing country-blues in the city without being a Luddite not only means including piercing electric guitars, but synthesizers. Surrounding its backwater acoustic instruments with synth burps and errors allows Califone to sound quaintly psychedelic in an egalitarian manner, but whereas 2001's masterful Roomsound sounded so improvised, it bordered on drunk, Quicksand/Cradlesnakes sounds more thought out. Perhaps this is a result of working on film scores in between the two records. Tim Rutili's vocals are still near indecipherable and his plain acoustic guitar patterns are still the centerpiece for the environmental experimentation, but songs like "Vampiring Again" skirt pop- single territory. The tracks that resonate are those that play up the country-boy-goes-to-the-city bleakness, the fellow who, despite mastering his new scene in necessary manner, still misses home -- though the story could also fit the other way around. Rutili's words connect these dichotomies in mind-bending ways. "Northern feel basement light/milk black killing/green inside like sour young fruit/counting every edible shade of red," he sings on "(red)"