This is one of the most underrated, brilliant records I\u2019ve ever heard. I must\u2019ve been about 13 or 14 when I got this on cassette for Christmas and I still love it. <\/p>\n
Completely different from their previous records, California<\/i> is where Mr. Bungle entered the easy listening phase of their career, but everything\u2019s still brilliant. \u201cSweet Charity\u201d could\u2019ve benefited from some radio airplay, it\u2019s that accessible. Switching from Hawaiian guitar to lovely, mellow percussion work, it sounds like a completely different band from the one that produced songs like \u201cThe Girls Of Porn,\u201d \u201cMy Ass Is On Fire\u201d and \u201cEveryone I Went to High School With Is Dead.\u201d And that\u2019s just track one! A masterpiece.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Air Conditioned Nightmare\u201d is like Middle Eastern surf rock, yet it works. No other band outside of the Residents or Captain Beefheart could make this work, but Bungle pulled it off. It also shows the musical sophistication that developed between a song like \u201cSqueeze Me Macaroni\u201d and here. A band that grew this much could\u2019ve blown minds if they\u2019d managed a forth record. \u201cArs Moriendi\u201d sounds like death metal collided with an Arabian dance band, but just think of all the possibilities.<\/p>\n
\u201cNone Of Them Knew They Were Robots\u201d sounds like the Bungle of old, very schizophrenic and all over the place musically and lyrically, but still oh so good! Trevor Dunn\u2019s \u201cRetrovertigo,\u201d remains the band\u2019s greatest song, just all-around stunning. Lovely, beautiful and touching, the whole band just ups their musical ante and turned out probably the last great song of the \u201990s, utterly, devastatingly mind-blowing.<\/p>\n
\u201cPink Cigarette\u201d is the most radio-friendly song here, smooth easy listening that might feel a bit different to the ears after the aural assault of the first half of the record. Definitely a different sort of track, but again the band makes it work. \u201cVanity Fair\u201d follows in that path, coming across like a \u201970s soul song with some really great bass and one of the more traditional performances vocalist Mike Patton ever did on a Bungle disc.<\/p>\n
While not as schizophrenic as their two previous records, California <\/i>proved that even a band like Mr. Bungle could stretch their wings and become accessible to a modern-day audience. It\u2019s such a shame they ended a year after this, because who knows what they could\u2019ve done in the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":33518,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[9756],"rating":[5646],"class_list":["post-45338","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-mr-bungle","rating-rating-a"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/45338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/45338\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=45338"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=45338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}