Califone with Dead Gowns

A full band show with stalwarts of song and experimentation Califone— their first appearance at SPACE since 2009!

With 25 years of Califone in his catalog (not to mention a variety of other projects, including alt-rock heroes Red Red Meat), the Chicago-born, Los Angeles-based Tim Rutili knows well how to find that moment of awe and bliss even as things are falling apart. Part poet, part abstract painter, and always surrounded by a variety of hyper-talented collaborators (here including longtime cohorts Ben Massarella, Michael Krassner, Rachel Blumberg, and Brian Deck, as well as the likes of Nora O’Connor and Finom’s Macie Stewart), Rutili has always excelled at luring listeners through elusive lyrics, flashes of shadows and images coming together in disarming unity.

How does one cope with the pang of desire? It’s the tender, sometimes volatile question that  confronts Genevieve Beaudoin on her debut full-length as Dead Gowns.  A deft lyricist with a sweeping range of poetic color and texture, Beaudoin paints her story in  dark romantics, presenting a woman in the high summer of adulthood deciphering life’s capacity  to fulfill desires or let them go painfully unmet. These cravings – to be touched, to be known, to  have just one more encounter with someone lost to time – are a lacuna Beaudoin prods at  insistently throughout the album’s twelve songs.