“Dolby’s Rupees: Califone – ‘3 Legged Animals'”

After college, I was kind of forced to move out west. My mom and sister had relocated out there and I couldn’t find anyone to live with back here in the Midwest. On the way out, driving in my shi**y little Honda Civic, I remember rolling into this gas station around the Indiana/Illinois state border on the toll road, and my Roots & Crowns CD had progressed to “3 Legged Animals.” And it was almost like I tried to ignore it, like I was trying to ignore how much I got off on that car full of three ugly dudes who were staring at me and who hated me, and the friendliness of the portly 45-year-old clerk who would greet me inside. 

I got Roots & Crowns upon the Pitchfork review of Amanda Petrusich. I must admit, too, that it was almost nothing like I envisioned it being, from her review. Her mentions of things like “Americana” made me think, for some reason, of Beck’s Odelay. When I got the CD and took it home, to the Indianapolis apartment I was living in at the time, it seemed absolutely like a celestial recreation of Beatles pop with Midwestern, folky instrumentation. The concise and perfect “Spider’s House” and the rhythmically expansive “The Eye You Lost in the Crusades” would attest to this. I still remember driving around Indy that winter with Roots & Crowns on and the memories are absolutely emblazoned into my brain, of the gorgeous riff in “Sunday Noises” (which actually rips off Oasis, of all bands), of the inimitable “Our Kitten Sees Ghosts” and of course when the band finally get kind of funky, of all things, with “Black Metal Valentine.” But it was a repeated listen to “3 Legged Animals” which really got me back to the epicenter of this band’s songwriting and production — those guitars seemed fully “black metal,” as it were, but feeding into this pristine pop sense rendered with sublime tranquility, and lyrics about sleeping and dreaming, for a true, serene masterpiece. 

“3 Legged Animals” is tranquil pop perfection but it’s also a track that is bolstered and upholstered with random, glorious rhythmic nonsense. A lot of the credit for this should go to Brian Deck, producer of Roots & Crowns, who definitely treats music like something physical but something that can be ambient at the same time, which, amazingly, is accomplished in “3 Legged Animals.” The weird, strategic placements of rhythmic feedback, that is, help furnish the track with a soothing aspect, like something cathartic, while not really feeding into anything logical the song would seem to have to offer. But in this way, it’s like the big city it’s from — it’s wild, expansive and not always sensible, but always real, original and impossible to imitate. 

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