The longer you listen to ‘Metaterranea’ the more you realise what a challenge it is to pin down Old Californio to any given style. There are elements of country, elements of straight-ahead rock and even a bit of jazz thrown in. What you can be certain of is that the songs are well-crafted and the playing is superb throughout. The choice of songs to top and tail the album shines a light on the band’s influences and the musical journey taken by the ten songs.
The album opens with a tribute to El Camino Real (definitely not the King’s Road in Chelsea) and the people who gather in the bars in the towns along the old highway. It’s a song that harks back to the analogue and organic era of the seventies (there’s even a lyrical reference to “The lotus eaters and the luddites”) and great bar bands with musicians playing guitars, keys, drums and bass as opposed to sequencers, loop stations and laptops. Like the rest of the album it’s more about the feel than the technical aspects.
The album takes us on a journey, through all of its twists and turns to the final song ‘Just Like a Cloud’ which is a lyrical and musical exploration of dissolution. Lyrically it’s all about the thought of returning to the ecosphere after death, while musically it starts as a solid rock arrangement with guitar and electric piano before an extended guitar solo morphs away from rock territory into atonal freeform jazz to represent the random scattering of fragmented remains.
The name Old Californio is entirely accurate. Songwriter Rich Dembowski is an old-school melancholy West Coast troubadour with dreamlike songscapes and lyrical references to evanescence, mythology (Sisyphus) and even Holy Communion. The musical settings also reflect the late sixties/early seventies vibe with hints of The Band and the rockier Neil Young material. It’s loose but with a nice swing. If there’s one song that encapsulates the outsider status of Rich Dembowski, it’s ‘Weeds/Wildflowers’, which sees the outsider as the weed. As gardeners will tell you most weeds are just plants that grow where you don’t want them.
‘Metaterranea’ is very much a back-to-basics album where the focus is on creating settings that emphasise the message of the original and unusual songs without any unnecessary studio trickery – just great arrangements and great playing. I’ll take that any day of the week.
Here’s the album’s opener, ‘Old Kings Road’:
