Reemerging after a nearly three-year hiatus, Tim Rutili manages to capture a beauty on Roots & Crowns that, while perhaps not surprising given his 14-year winning streak, never ceases to amaze. Even though we’ve heard these elements all before — the muffled drumming, hard-to-interpret lyrics, simple-yet-gorgeous chord progressions, layered distortion — Rutili always manages to make them coalesce into more than the sum of their parts.

Nowhere is this more clear on the new LP than with “3 Legged Animals,” quite possibly the best piece of music Califone has managed to date. That’s saying a hell of a lot, especially considering that I regard their first EP as hands-down one of the prettiest pieces of music of the ‘90s. In some ways, this song feels like it might have even fit on that EP, sitting well next to “Silvermine Pictures” or even “Dime Fangs.” Except Califone has evolved since then, and so has its music. Given a few listens and it’s the depth that comes through; Rutili’s singing style is still beautiful, restrained, and rich with emotion (seriously, that “sleep for me sleepless / dream for me dreamless” repetition is unbelievable), but Brian Deck’s production style has reached a level of absolute gorgeous perfection that almost boggles the mind.

The acoustic guitar intro is classic Califone, and that slight threat from the electric rumblings matches it perfectly. Where it gets crazy is when the bottom drops out and Ben Massarella’s drums open up a whole new world: fuzzed out, distorted to sound five miles off, and then pulled into focus with light brushes and some extra percussive elements. It’s a jaw-dropping effect (not intrusive, yet unquestionably gorgeous), and paired with that rickety string section and occasional piano plinks it pulls together that sort of tossed-off, rumpled beauty that Califone have always managed to achieve seemingly effortlessly.

Toward the end of the song everything drops back, letting the drums and that simple piano line move up front with the electric guitar twiddling. They reverse the move here, though, going from the brushes out to the fuzzy electronic beats at the 3:38 mark; it opens up the field of sound in the way that makes me want to invest a lot of money into a better stereo system. When a song does that, never mind the album as a whole, you know you’ve hit on something special.

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