Califone Stitches

The Chicago experimental roots-rock band Califone are back with their follow-up to 2009's All My Friends Are Funeral Singers. Stitches is out September 3 via Dead Oceans. Check out the title track below.

The band has also scheduled a tour, which includes a stop at this year's Hopscotch Music Festival.

It's the first album the band has recorded outside of Chicago. It was written and recorded in Southern California, Arizona, and Texas. In a press release, frontman Tim Rutili (formerly of Red Red Meat) said, "Those dry landscapes and beaches and hills and shopping malls all made it into the music."

Here are some other thoughts from Rutili on the album:

"During this process, I started to really look at myself and find a clearer, more honest voice. I forced myself to write as much as possible. I allowed myself to be crabby and vulnerable as much as I could stand it … and slowly the songs got better."

"We treated each song as its own particular planet. Bringing in different people and recording in different places helped bring some tension to the whole thing. I wanted this to be a more schizophrenic record, stitching together conflicting textures and feels."

"It was a much more solitary process, and that freed me up to feel less self-conscious about singing and writing more personal lyrics. I tried to keep the songs visual and poetic, but it was more important to allow myself to feel and be vulnerable and not hide in the music. Instead of writing from my balls and brain, this time I wrote from the nerves, skin, and heart."

01 Movie Music Kills a Kiss
02 Stitches
03 Frosted Tips
04 Magdalene
05 Bells Break Arms
06 moonbath.brainsalt.a.holy.fool
07 Moses
08 A Thin Skin of Bullfight Dust
09 We are a Payphone
10 turtle eggs/an optimist