A hastily signed, well-worn postcard from the group's California haunts of Redlands, Santa Cruz, and San Francisco,
La Costa Perdida
, the eighth studio album from consistently unclassifiable freak-rock pioneers
Camper Van Beethoven
, plays fast and loose with the band's mythology. Steeped in a hazy patina of post-Laurel Canyon, ratty boot-cut jeans, and barefoot, Pacific Ocean Americana,
CVB
's first album since 2004's
New Roman Times
is willfully homespun, rough around the edges, and crackly as a campfire full of pine branches, roaches, junk mail, and empty tall boys. Boasting a well-seasoned crew in
David Lowery
,
Victor Krummenacher
Jonathan Segal
Greg Lisher
Chris Pedersen
, and
Michael Urbano
),
flies highest when it's high-fiving its fan base. Stand-out cuts like "Peaches in the Summertime" and the Tejano-tinged title cut will please the old guard; the quietly propulsive "Come Down the Coast" and the sweetly psychedelic "Someday Our Love Will Sell Us Out" will appeal to fans of the group's
Virgin Records
era (
Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart
Key Lime Pie
), and the gritty "Too High for the Love-In" and the subversively epic "Northern California Girls" should satiate
Cracker
fanatics, resulting in one of the year's most idiosyncratic releases. Depending on your predilection, it will either bore the life out of you, pass on by like a rest stop without a vending machine, or reignite the flame for a band that has always celebrated, as
Lowery
sings on 1989's "All Her Favorite Fruit," the "fecundity of life and love." ~ James Christopher Monger