What is spinning?

[Davey]

Califone - Stitches

Really nice record, been listening to it a lot. Pretty good sounding, and a fun listen too with all those layers of sound, little noises move in and out of the scenes, almost go unnoticed at times, but still seem to play important roles in building the landscape for the songs. Interesting music. I think when those horns first come in during "We Are A Payphone" may be one of my favorite moments, really brilliant touch. Just the right amount of everything on this one, at least for me, at least for now

Yeah, it doesn't disappoint as per usual with Califone. "Moses" is my favorite song at the moment but I'm still in the getting-to-know-this-album phase.

I'm enjoying this one. It's a great listen from start to finish. B side is . . . brilliant, as confirmed by our little Yorkie, Charlie last night. A trance-like calmness comes over him when he hears good music. He gives this one four paws up.

Our greyhound "Dash" relaxing to some Califone

Not sure a lazy dog is the best spokesperson (spokesanimal?), but nice interview at Aquarium Drunkard ... Rutili should really sit down and write a novel with all these characters... Aquarium Drunkard » Catching Up With Califone :: The AD Interview

Just as distinct as the sound of the songs are the characters that inhabit Rutili’s landscapes, like Five Easy Pieces/Nashville actress Karen Black (who “forgets the words, like Memphis when the rapture breaks”) and an assortment of Biblical characters: the warring brothers Esau and Jacob, the “old wizard freak” Moses, who led the Israelites to the Promised Land – but couldn’t enter himself.

“[Moses] takes a whole tribe of people through the desert, gets them where they’re going, and then this ****ing weird God tells him he can’t go in, because he screwed up,” Rutili says. “I was just thinking about this guy watching everybody cross the river, when he can’t. I think, in a lot of ways, everybody thinks that they’re that victim.”

And while the God of the Old Testament, “a wild animal,” Rutili says, “petty and with very human jealousies,” watches over most of Stitches, Rutili steers toward the New Testament with “Magdalene,” named for the character the Gnostic Gospels purport to be the wife of Christ – though she’s more commonly defined by the “whore archetype.”

“In the Gnostic texts, she’s the wife of Jesus, and the other apostles are jealous of her,” Rutili says. “’Why does he kiss her on the mouth? Why does he pay more attention to her?’ There are a lot of those weird arguments in the Gnostic texts that I thought were pretty interesting. I thought about this character that was edited out of this fake history for political reasons, you know? All of those ideas sort of triggered that song, and took it back to this strange woman and what happened. It’s about someone that gets written out of history, and where they go.”