Album: Califone

Quicksand/Cradlesnakes, Thrill Jockey

2003 is proving something of a golden age of American alt.rock, with great albums by Calexico, John Doe and Bonnie "Prince" Billy joined this week by The White Stripes and this fine second album from the Chicago band Califone, who occupy the sparsely populated territory where alt.roots music meets free-jazz improvisation. With the percussionist Ben Massarella fashioning bespoke rhythm tracks from all manner of clicking, thumping and shaking noises, and the new additions Jim Becker and Joe Adamik bringing in, respectively, banjo/fiddle/ accordion and horns/keys/drums/kalimba, Califone's music is certainly on the same map as Tom Waits, yet distinguished by the singer-songwriter Tim Rutili's more abbreviated, imagistic lyric style. There's something pleasing about finding lines such as "Quiet quick violence/ Like shit on old money, can't wash it off/ Held like lice on a lion/ Stay quick and quiet my mean little seed" riding sawing fiddle and plunking banjo. Califone mostly resist the urge to fashion facsimiles of old roots styles, preferring strange new forms with abstract electronics and free-jazz sax. That said, some of their best work appears on the sly blues grind of "Your Golden Ass" and the relaxed raunch of "When Leon Spinx Moved into Town", in which the guitar interplay suggests Television's Marquee Moon with a more bluesy heart.