Singer/songwriter Jill Sobule, who “Kissed a Girl” far more convincingly than Katy Perry in 1995, raised the money for her seventh full-length album through fan donations. That she managed to meet her projected target of $75,000 (recording, manufacturing, distribution, and promotion) in fewer than three months says more about the state of the music industry in the late 2000s than any RIAA lawsuit or major-label meltdown ever could. Artists build the fire but it’s the fans who keep it lit, something Sobule knows well, as she promised each of her rock & roll philanthropists a gift proportionate to their donation (free album download, sit in on a recording session, album group vocal appearance). Like her late friend (and occasional bandmate) Warren Zevon, Sobule has a blade in one hand and flowers in the other, and her songs are always rooted to a simple and effective melody. California Years finds the Denver-born, transplanted New Yorker celebrating her adopted West Coast with typical wit, grace, irony, sweetness, and satire, simultaneously extolling the state’s penchant for free-spirited idealism (“San Francisco,” “Palm Springs”) and ripping it a new one for its shallow, self-absorbed celebrity culture (“Nothing to Prove,” “Spiderman”). In between, it’s the usual semi-biographical cast of characters who inhabit every Sobule album: death (“Empty Glass”), amiable hedonists (“A Good Life”), first loves (“Wendell Lee”), and quirky adventurers (“Mexican Pharmacy”), all of whom come stocked with a slowly diminishing Northeast accent that can be both sweet and wicked, depending on whose audience they find themselves addressing. – James Christopher Monger
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