Califone, the long-running project of Tim Rutili, has shared “ox-eye” from their impending new album villagers (Jealous Butcher Records) out May 19, 2023. The song, which impossibly straddles classic AM singer-songwriter aesthetics and jagged rock abstraction, comes paired with an appropriately head-swimming psychedelic visual edited and directed by Rachel Blumberg & Rutili himself (who also helmed the similarly hallucinatory video for the initial album single “The hapsburg jaw”). The group has announced that they’ll mark the release of the new album with a run of six shows on the east coast this June, including stops in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Durham, and Kingston, NY – full dates below and tickets here. West coast dates are anticipated to follow.

villagers’ songs are full of people coming to terms with the gaps between perception and reality, with the very concept of reality, with time slinking constantly towards an unseen cliff. Recorded in four cities and bolstered by a pool of collaborators that includes longtime cohorts Brian Deck, Michael Krassner, Rachel Blumberg, and Ben Massarella, the record’s nine compositions smoothly bounce between taut grooves and rough-sketched studio exploration, seamlessly blending elements of electronic experimentation, Laurel Canyon harmonies, and musique concrete into a horizonless sonic geography.

CALIFONE TOUR DATES

June 15 – Saugerties, NY @ Orpheum*

*(performing live score to Parajanov’s THE COLOR OF POMEGRANATES INFO) 

June 16 – Brooklyn, NY @ Union Pool+

 June 17 – Kingston, NY @ Tubby’s+

 June 18 – Allston, MA @ The Cantab Lounge+

 June 19 – Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda’s+

 June 20 – Washington, DC @ Quarry House+

 June 21 – Durham, NC @ The Pinhook+

+ (with Max Knouse)