Wow, that's a wide open field. Ya got a minute? Depends somewhat on how faithful to that sound you want, but I'd assume you don't really need something that sounds just like it, since you already have it
Anyway, YHF has kind of a distinctive sound since it mixes many pre-existing elements in ways that weren't often mixed at the time. Mercury Rev did something similar on their Deserter's Songs album a few years before YHF, but tapping into some of the Band's version of Americana to mix with some Neil Young heart & soul and the Beatles pop and Pink Floyd space and the noise elements of their early career. Similar to the Flaming Lips emergence into a true pop band on Clouds Taste Metallic and especially Soft Bulletin. Modest Mouse explored similar territory between inner and outer space on their excellent The Moon & Antarctica. And Issac Brock assembled some of my favorites in indie rock for the Ugly Casanova Sharpen Your Teeth project, including from Black Heart Procession whose last three or four albums are also excellent. And also a couple guys from Califone ...
But one that I'd recommend is Quicksand/Cradlesnakes by that same Califone. Amazing work. Probably my favorite of 2003. Some of that same type of fragmented imagery that Tweedy and his band used on YHF. And similarities in the music too, with electronic elements augmenting the acoustics. There was a label on the cover with a quote from the Chicago Tribune, "How the Flaming Lips might've interpreted Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music". Maybe, but The Flaming Lips have never come to my mind when listening to Califone, although more pop elements have been added on this release. They've also added a little more avant-garde jazz feel to this one, kind of like they're moving beyond that Rolling Stone's Exile On Main Street blueprint for dirty folk-blues. Not that they've abandoned their original blend of electronically textured folk-blues, they've added to and extended it in new directions, making for a more diverse album than their last one, the excellent Roomsound, although that one still remains my favorite.
The song "Michigan Girls" capsulizes much of the band's appeal for me. Outstanding guitar playing and song writing, with one of Tim Rutili's best vocals yet. He can really breathe life into what sometimes reads like a string of fractured images, "dry white scratches on a sunburnt shin, don't give it a name", giving it color and body, yet he still manages to keep the images loosely tethered with his vocal shadings. Not that he has that great a voice, but like most good blues singers, he does know how to use what he has. Superb song, especially when it hits the chorus, and the spacey percussion and piano sounds fill the background.
Here's what someone else said at the americana-uk.com site ... http://www.thrilljockey.com/catalog/?id=100159
Ripped bleeding from pop, country, avant-noise, art-rock and plain old folk music, “Quicksand/Cradlesnakes” reinforces Califone'’s position as the premier left of centre noise-niks with tunes, anywhere in the world. It’s their first to be licensed to Thrill Jockey, and comes not so long after the excellent news of Fruitbats signing to Subpop; whilst the endless comparisons aggravate Johnson and Rutili equally, they do come from some of the same places musically speaking, albeit Fruitbats being more pastoral of these cousins. More pertinently perhaps, for Modest Mouse / Ugly Casanova lovers, Rutili firmly eclipses Issac Brock’s startling talent, whilst veering even further from sanity. The key to the success of the whole project is an innate ability of knowing when to lay glittering melodies before the listener, and when to when to make a rhythmic but somewhat atonal statement of alienation from what has come before. There are segments on the fantastically titled “Horoscopic Amputation Honey” which recall the most precious moments of country-blues tinged 70’s American rock- real nuggets of pop heaven interspersed with feedback, fuzz and a mean lead guitar figure carefully picked out with clarity and space. “Michigan Girls” opens with an acoustic guitar, an elegant, restrained, folky vocal and a cello casting a calmness and spare beauty over proceedings; every now and again, there’s a Massarella-inspired percussive breakdown before the chiming momentum is restored. “Cat Eats Coyote” is a lunatic abstract workout which sounds like a nightmare from Rennie Sparks and Susan Young’s combined sub-conscious, their dreams interrupted by Sam Coombes’ sax player Stanley Zappa. And “Golden Ass” is a really neat pysch-blues indie rocker. “Quicksand/ Cradlesnakes” is a big step up- a cracking sophomore effort which combines increased accessibility with just the right amount of abstract weirdness; unlike some avant-rockers, Califone have a firm rooting in folk music, and never even hint at progressive rock, which is an enormous relief. Ugly Casnanove and Fruitbats fans should definitely apply, and so should anyone with an interest in intelligent, expressive American pop music with guts, melody and a deviant, wandering spirit. MP
EDIT: BTW, just checked and here's a nice review of Califone and Wilco together ... http://orient.bowdoin.edu/orient/arc...11-07/ae07.htm
And also at Amazon.com the editorial review of Quicksand make s mention of YHF at the end ...
Dustbowl country, haunting percussion improvisations, and rugged rock & roll are roughly hammered together on the fourth album from Califone. Salvaged from the ashes of Drag City’s supremely haunting blues travellers Red Red Meat, this shape-shifting group--built around the core duo of Ben Massarella and Tim Rutili--is a hard to pin down. "Your Golden Ass" is an inelegant, leathery garage drone that sounds like the Modern Lovers collectively overdosing in an alley on the Lower East Side. "Horoscopic Amputation Honey" rolls mandolin, cello, and sparse electronics into an offbeat, yet oddly hymnal campfire sing-along, while "Cat Eats Coyote" is an on-the-spot foray into junkyard percussion and ghostly sax. All these stylistic skips mean that Quicksand/Cradlesnakes feels like a contradictory mix of city savvy and rural roughness, extravagant technology and salvage-store poverty. Anyone that felt Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot or Calexico’s Feast of Wire should have been more experimental will be well-served by this exploration of marginal Americana. --Louis Pattison
