Califone is at the peak of its powers on All My Friends Are Funeral Singers, its sixth song based album. The long-awaited follow-up to 2006's acclaimed Roots and Crowns, the album is the strongest collection of songs in a career with no shortage of strength. TAll My Friends Are Funeral Singers is a dense collage of sounds, expertly formed into fully realized pop songs.

Roots and Crowns. "Uniting where you come from - your roots - with what you strive to be or what you reinvent yourself to become - crowns," explains Califone's Tim Rutili. "At the bottom of these songs are the memories and images you sift through in the process." Imagery of rebirth comes up often on this CD. Limitations, obstructions, darkness, and the new possibilities they illuminate is what "Roots And Crowns" is all about. The LP is limited to 1,000 copies and comes in a jacket hand-screened by Tim Rutili. Califone have toured with Wilco, Iron And Wine, Modest Mouse, The Shins, and The Sea And Cake, and were invited to the Sonic Youth-curated ATP.

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In the beginning, it was this: electro-rustic sonic dreams emerging from the fog like a ghost, one hand holding a bag of rusty nails and dirt, another a pack of tarot cards with paintings of car crashes, electric nuns and foaming midget horses.

These are the 12 songs first heard on the self-titled EP released by Perishable/Flydaddy in 1998 and on the other self-titled EP released on Road Cone in 2000. Now that both releases are out of print, it's time to make Califone's early music - plus two bonus tracks - available again. It's uniquely American folk churned up by noisy machines, with damnation and redemption unearthed in equal measure.

Califone's music makes implicit sense even as their cavalcade of circus freaks throw reason out the window. Tim Rutili's sleepy-eyed vocals luxuriously drape stark guitar figures; live and programmed percussion leans into the dreamy haze of an electric piano; layers of loops and subconscious transmissions echo the heady disorientation you feel when you get inside the lyrics. And oh yeah, did I mention how this stuff is completely, instantly engaging? It resolves the grand and the personal without a whit of tension, and in the process delivers a confounding, deep beauty that is ever-necessary. Now is the time, as it always was.

This re-issue of Califone's debut full-length covers the same rustic, slightly ramshackle back forty that Tim Rutili has been ploughing since at least as far back as his previous band Red Red Meat. This time, the tilled bedrock unveils the most vividly colored, luring crop of songs Rutili has ever harvested. "Roomsound" is a hauntingly unique and distinctive record of crafted and sculpted beauty.

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Califone is at the peak of its powers on All My Friends Are Funeral Singers, its sixth song based album. The long-awaited follow-up to 2006's acclaimed Roots and Crowns, the album is the strongest collection of songs in a career with no shortage of strength. TAll My Friends Are Funeral Singers is a dense collage of sounds, expertly formed into fully realized pop songs.