Tim Rutili dropped his eighth LP as Califone over the summer of 2023, yet Villagers wasn’t a complete collection of all the songs he’d recorded at the time. Enter The Villagers Companion, an upcoming compilation of tracks that were created during the making of Villagers, but didn’t quite fit the mold of that LP. “Some of the songs feel like they take place in a parallel universe to the album we were making,” Rutili notes. “Other songs—the John Prine cover and the Mecca Normal cover—happened a little earlier and led directly or indirectly to the writing of the Villagers songs.”
As we anticipate hearing those covers and the rest of the project’s material, today he’s sharing the collection’s first single in the form of the hushed avant-folk track “Every Amnesia Movie.” Despite the song’s repeated chorus of “When have I ever given anyone what they want?,” this is precisely what we’ve come to Califone for over these past 25 years.
Check out the new track below, and catch the band on their “Living Room Tour” next month at the dates listed here. You can also revisit our FLOOD Session of the band performing Villagers’s title track here.
