Califone: Califone EP

All too often, great bands break up right after great breakthroughs. Chicago's Red Red Meat isn't the most publicly missed band in the world, but its gorgeous deconstruction of the blues (as pre-processed through the music of The Rolling Stones) was one of indiedom's quiet triumphs in the '90s. The band never officially broke up, and it still reconvenes on occasion. What's more, every once in a while, its members find time to collaborate on records. Sin Ropas features former Red Red Meat man Tim Hurley alongside drummer Danni Losello and bassist Noel Kupersmith, and was engineered by Red Red Meat's Brian Deck. Not coincidentally, from the start, the disc sounds of a piece with Hurley's previous band, picking up where 1997's There's A Star Above The Manger Tonight left off. Hurley's slurred-to-the-point-of-incomprehension vocals, slide guitars, synths, and odd arrangements on songs such as "Little Cheater" and "Daddy's Lamp" won't fool anyone, RRM hiatus or no. Confusing matters even more is Califone, a band that includes Red Red Meat's Ben Massarella, Deck, Hurley, and Tim Rutili, among others. And, yes, that's all of Red Red Meat. While Hurley writes all the songs in Sin Ropas, Rutili writes in Califone, but the mood is still one of drugged-out blues with buried hooks. Still, Califone may be the more melodic and interesting of the two bands, though not by much, and "Electric Fence" and others are great late-night grumpfests, deceptively simple affairs with plenty of surprises lingering beneath the hypnotic surface.