California by The Coyote Problem

”

-- Jim Trageser, North County Times

"The Coyote Problem obviously knows how to craft a good song. Each tune takes you on a fulfilling journey…”

-- Nina Garin, The San Diego Union-Tribune

“The Coyote Problem’s new album 'California' brews up an alchemy that transforms dirt into gold, sin into redemption and loss into transcendence. In a long-standing tradition of California artists from Steinbeck to Ansel Adams, the Problem lets the grandeur of nature take center stage. Trusting that things as they are, without frivolous ornamentation, present portals to truth that artifice can never achieve, The Coyote Problem trusts the simplicity of guitars, drums and the human voice to lay bare the essential nature of things. Honesty wins every time. Achieving clarity and a burnished vigor few albums can claim, 'California' stands out like a giant Sequoia in the Americana, alt country and folk rock terrain. Too busy to go camping this summer? Good news: listening to 'California' is the aural equivalent of a moonlit night in Yosemite Valley.”

--Some Guy on Some Blog

"California", the second album from The Coyote Problem and the fourth from singer-songwriter Peter Bolland, is an album with a singular, central theme. Variously known as healing, redemption, recovery, centeredness, integration, ascension, transcendence and spiritual growth, "California" breathes into song the breathless dream of rebirth. "California" celebrates the eternal yearning of the human spirit to recast itself in higher forms.

The central metaphor for this rebirth is California itself. As a place where heaven and earth meet, California is the embodiment of the nexus between ideal and reality, between aspiration and achievement, between visioning and realizing.

Many of the songs, most notably "Long Way Home", "Into the Mystery", "Right Thing Wrong", "Goin’ Home", "I Still Believe" and the title song "California" openly explore the album’s central theme. Unapologetically spiritual, these core songs present a vision of what Aldous Huxley called the “perennial philosophy”. Huxley discerned a deep commonality within all the world’s wisdom traditions beneath their varied surfaces. This vision of hope and possibility leaves each of us in the center of the spiral—no one is marginalized or excluded. All minds share in one reality, what Emerson called the over-soul. The central theme of "California" celebrates this unity. A vision of transcendence, inextricably tied to the land, moves across these songs like wind on water. Amending past wrongs, taking responsibility for the contents of our own consciousness, choosing to be creators instead of victims, practicing kindness and committing to compassionate action – the skills of the well-lived life do not happen by accident. They are born in a curious alchemy of effort and effortlessness. They come from the will only when we realize union between our will and the Higher Mind. When we cease to live solely in the low-rent tenement of our ego we begin to glide through the well-lit halls of the mansions of spirit. And we realize we’ve been there all along. The ego was just a tiny, stuffy room at the end of the hall. And we couldn’t find the door. And when we finally peered out we realized that we live in the Master’s house. And that we are the Master.

Other songs like "Lori Let Me", "I Got Out" and "Only the Moon" celebrate the way love brings life into things from inside, the way sap brings life to old branches. The album’s remaining tracks collect a variety of character studies and historical figures, real and imagined. "Martin King and Coretta" tells the story of American icons not as deified heroes but as regular people with uncommon vision and tenacity. Told by a ghost, "England" is an immigrant tale of early California settlers suffering the heartache of crossed loyalties. "Mother" is a meditative ballad sung from the point of view of an unborn baby searching the world for a mother to be born into. "She’s Alone Again" is an unremitting lament of an old San Francisco hippie wondering where the threads of her life have led her. "Your Own Heart" is a hymn to courage and strength in the face of near-hopeless dissolution. "Let’s Get Drunk" is a stomping pub anthem, a seize-the-day homage to Dionysus. "Don’t Change" captures the pathos of that last moment of high school when you finally had the courage to ask the girl you’ve secretly been in love with for years if you can sign her yearbook and all you can think of writing is, “don’t change, have a bitchen summer, stay cool”.

The sound is simple, warm, clear and full. Like wood smoke rising in a star-filled summer sky, the music of The Coyote Problem conjures up a simpler time of lost connections, a time of sacred remembrance, a time when just being alive was enough. No mere nostalgia-mongers, The Coyote Problem pull the threads of its influences into a vibrant weave at once fresh and familiar. You’ll swear you’ve heard this before, but not quite like this.

Average Customer Review: