Paul wears his considerable self-discipline lightly.  The title song of this album is one of the best and freest things I've heard in years.  If you're a songwriter, you're likely to get the feeling that Paul gives you permission to do things with music you hadn't even thought of before.  If you're not a songwriter, well, you might feel like he gives you permission to do anything at all.
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On California, Paul Curreri captures that moment at dusk when sunlight slips through window slats, freeze-framing dust motes, preserving in an amber sap that sense of rightness after a hard-played day. This is a beautiful, haunting, brilliant work. There’s a coat of brightness to the songs, but be careful: they have a deceptive depth and undertow that will pull you beneath their velvety surface. You’ll go willingly. 

The fun starts with “Now I Can Go On,” with a little piano punching Paul’s acoustic fretwork. It’s at first familiar, traditional even, but listen to what he’s doing with those chords, how they spin out and find the pavement again, adding a sense of danger and delight to the ride. “Once upon a rooftop” has harp and hand-claps and Paul’s innovative wordplay (“…and you woke with a soul prosthesis…”) and more of those crazy subliminal chords worked into the melody. “Here Comes Another Morning” ups the ante with snap-claps-on-crack. “Tight Pack Me Sugar” is indulgent stream-of-consciousness Paul that you can forgive just because it’s so much fun to look at the world through his eyes without filter.
Then there’s the anchor of the album, the title track. “Too few folks know how fun it is / to believe invisible stuff like this,” he starts. As he describes what it’s like “to drift among the untied knots,” his fingerpicking and otherworldly vocals work like a sonic incense. The recording on this is lovely: somewhat demo-like, it creates a feeling like someone is sitting in the next room, telling stories, showing family pictures. The song stands on its own, but do check out the video on his website. Directed by his wife, Devon Sproule (a daring, revelatory musician in her own right), the video intimately tangles with the song like a Saturday morning wrestling match. I love how it fades into the recorded crackles of the fire at the end.
The second half of the album glides on the same wistful trajectory, even with a WTF moment at the end of “I Can Hear The Future Calling,” when he delivers the final lyric with a perplexing drone: somehow the spirit of the song stands up, despite Paul’s own sabotage. Balance is immediately restored, rather symbolically, on the next track, “Wildegeeses,” when Devon offers harmonies. (There’s a great backstory there with these artists. Check out their Valentine duets sometime if you can find them.) In the next track, Paul declares with trademark guileless bravado, “I wish every man and woman could kiss my wife: my friends, you are looking at a man who is honestly saved.” In some ways, Paul sets us up here, having started the damnation-redemption-reflection theme of these three songs with “When What You Do Don’t Do It Anymore,” another great piece of wordplay.
This album is just as ambitious as 2007’s The Velvet Rut, but more immediately accessible. (I personally loved Velvet Rut, in part because it showed his artist’s soul and willingness to chase after, even be eviscerated by, musical ideas.) At first listen, California is closer to albums like Songs for Devon Sproule or From Long Gones to Hawkmoth, but man, as solid as those albums are, as creatively energizing and inspiring, there’s something about California’s seasoned-yet-reborn vibe that will make this a soundtrack you want to live your life by. Paul, of course, describes it best (from “Down By The Water,” the final track): “One foot in the finite, one foot in the divine.” Indeed.
These are the book-end tracks (this album is expertly sequenced, incidentally): “Stephen Crane” * “California” * “Down By The Water”
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Paul's music seems to get better with every studio release.  With his first album, I was bowled over by the skill and complexity of his guitar playing.  On California, though, it seems to be the little things that have been impressing me most.  While "Tight Pack Me Sugar" isn't my favorite song on this album (too soon to declare one, but there are probably four tracks still in contention for that title), it's been impossible to get that piano rhythm out of my head: it's simple and beautiful and hasn't left me since I first heard it two days ago.

None of that is meant to suggest that this album is a simple affair.  The mind blowing lyrics are here, as is the guitar playing that will sometimes leave you picking your jaw up off the floor.  But it's the often overlooked details like the rhythms -- usually simple and understated -- that have made this one such a special pleasure since it arrived. For instance, the way "I Can Hear the Future Calling" goes out with a growl that soon turns into what might be called Blue Ridge throat signing.  Or like that little piano bit in the "Sugar" song... man, you just gotta check that out...
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