califone - funeral singers from Califone on Vimeo.
‘Funeral Singers,’ the single from Califone’s critically acclaimed album All My Friends Are Funeral Singers (Dead Oceans). The album acts as a companion to Califone frontman Tim Rutili’s first feature film that he wrote and directed, also called All My Friends Are Funeral Singers. The highly anticipated film (starring cult indie actress Angela Bettis of Girl, Interrupted fame) is expected to screen at several film festivals early next year.
The music video for ‘Funeral Singers’ features footage from the film.
The Chicago-based band consists of multi-instrumentalists Tim Rutili, Jim Becker, Joe Adamik, and Ben Masseralla. On All My Friends Are Funeral Singers, the band employs a wide range of instrumentation and electronic effects to create a dense collage of sounds. Instruments range from the traditional (guitar, violin, banjo, percussion) to the unusual (optigan, stylophone, baritone ukulele, mbira, thumb piano). Longtime collaborator and producer Brian Deck (Iron & Wine, Gomez, Modest Mouse) says, “Califone have found a sound unlike anyone else, and are able to draw otherworldly sounds from very common instruments.”
Primary songwriter and vocalist Tim Rutili’s artistic endeavors stretch beyond music and include the creation of surreal short documentaries, music video and film scores. He makes his directorial debut with All My Friends Are Funeral Singers. The screenplay for the film, also written by Rutili, draws on the same themes and inspirations as the album, and many of the songs were written at the same time and contain the same images and characters. The movie centers around a fortune teller named Zel (played by respected cult actress Angela Bettis) who lives in an old house crowded with ghosts, including a priest, a bride, a mute child, some washed up vaudvillians and a noisy, sight-impaired group of musicians (Califone), among others. The film will be submitted to film festivals in early 2010.
CALIFONE
December 3 Husky Union Seattle, WA*
December 4 Rickshaw Theater Vancouver, BC*
December 5 The Mission Theater Portland, OR*
December 7 Great American Music Hall San Francisco, CA*
December 9 Hammer Museum Los Angeles, CA*
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