Sometimes Good Weather Follows Bad People

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.