- Music
- 04 Apr 01
For a few seconds, the Hawaiian guitar and plinking keyboards makes this resemble a High Llamas album. Then the rasping tones of Mike Patton kick in.
For a few seconds, the Hawaiian guitar and plinking keyboards makes this resemble a High Llamas album. Then the rasping tones of Mike Patton kick in.
The intention behind the album seems to be to explore the stranger aspects of Californian culture, through a bizarre mixture of musical styles, from ’50s doowop (‘Pink Cigarrette’), mental mexicano (‘Ars Moriendi’), to Patton coming on like some kind of manic, Primus-influenced Beach Boy on ‘The Air-Conditioned Nightmare’.
Patton’s singing technique employs a variety of styles: in turn, crooning, booming Latin chanting, John Spencer blues explosions and an assortment of oddball noises, on songs full of cartoonish sound effects’. Unfortunately, not much of this is remotely listenable.
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While California sounds like it was a lot of fun to make, it might have been better reserved for the amusement of the band’s close friends and family. Of novelty interest to Faith No More fans. Only.