For some it was on Hot Rail (2000) that John Convertino and Joey Burns’ Tex-Mex Americana vision reached its peak. Their, well, “Cal-exican” sound felt at once warm and familiar to fans of alt-country and Americana (and before that the likes of Love) but at the same time completely unique, with mariachi story-telling on tracks like ‘Ballad of Cable Hogue’ and ‘Service and Repair’ alongside brass-laden instrumentals fitting together as perfectly as nachos and guacamole. For many others it was 2003’s well-regarded follow up Feast of Wire, but either way, there have undoubtedly been patches of near-greatness for the Tucson duo and their many contributing friends throughout their 12 years. The decision to move in a more mainstream, brass-less, instrumental-less direction on 2006’s Garden Ruin, though, didn’t really reach the heights that might have been expected of it. So (if bands like Calexico actually worry about such things) sixth album Carried To Dust could be something of a pivotal release: returning to their desert roots (as the album’s title may imply) or carrying on down the shiny path to a potentially wider audience.
With that in mind, the opening ‘Victor Jara’s Hands’ seems like a statement of intent, containing each of the elements that first set the band apart from their contemporaries, from jubilant brass, to Spanish vocals, to the Latin American subject matter. It’s a bubbly start and has all the hallmarks of a live favourite, but for some reason there’s something that, at least at first, just doesn’t sit quite right about this re-introduction to the sounds of the dusty West – it ’s almost as if the band might be trying too hard to re-capture former glories. The hushed ‘Two Silver Trees’ is definitely heading in the right direction thanks to a dream-like chorus, but it still doesn’t quite excite as much as it could.
It takes until the gorgeous waltz ‘The News About William’, that builds from rattling drums and delicate strings to the closing soaring vocals, that Carried To Dust really settles into its groove. And from here it is some groove. The brief instrumental ‘Sarabande in Pencil Form’ is a strangely settling segue into ‘Writer’s Minor Holiday’ and ‘Man Made Lake’, songs that certainly confirm the growing suspicion: Calexico are back on form. In a big way. The road-trip rhythms, backing “ooohs” and “aaahs” and lyrics about “my Irish whiskey glass” of the former track, conjure up lofty literary allusions of a hard-drinking Kerouac or Bukowski, while the screeching guitars and dramatic tones of the latter picks up where ‘The News About William’ left off, showcasing the more impressive end of Joey Burns’ range compared with the whispered gruffness elsewhere.
Thankfully, the standard far from drops after this auspicious couplet and there are more and more signposts to the fact that this is Calexico on top of their game. The Latin sounds of the bouncy duet ‘Inspiracion’ provide a convenient time to practice your conversational Spanish, and this along with the likes of ‘House of Valparaiso’ (featuring old friend Iron &Wine’s Sam Beam) and the instrumental ‘El Gatillo (Trigger Revisited)’ recalls the finer mariachi moments of Calexico’s back catalogue. For the latter this is literally the case, it being a re-imagining of the Feast of Wire track ‘The Trigger’, but the initial concerns about the opening track being an attempt to recapture something lost are proven totally unfounded with each passing song. And in contrast to the it is perhaps the aching ballad ‘The Slowness’, steeped in pedal steel and lovely boy-girl harmonies is perhaps the most enrapturing moment, providing the soft centre to the album.
At 15 tracks Carried To Dust is a relatively long album (though not particularly by Calexican standards), but such is the consistency and vibrancy of almost every one of them that it seems to fly by, right up to the three suitably delightful compositions that wrap it up: a third and equally satisfying instrumental, ‘Falling From Sleeves’, the broody ‘Red Blooms’, and another triumphant collaboration, ‘Contention City’ with Tortoise’s Doug McCombs. Along with the other four fifths of the record, these tracks are filled with a whole range of textures – layers that get deeper and richer with every listen. To return to the original suggestion, it seems that rather than revert back entirely to their roots or continue down the road on which Garden Ruin seemed to be headed, Calexico have taken an entirely preferable route. For throughout the album the band perfectly bridge the gap between their unique Tex-Mex heritage and a more rounded sound.
If you were being overly critical you could say it is perhaps a little “lite” in a few places and lacks some of the menace of earlier works, but Calexico’s sixth long player is a real triumph, and at least as good as Feast of Wire, Hot Rail or anything they have put their name to thus far. The best thing is, the way it all clicks in to gear here makes for great excitement about Convertino and Burns’ future work – something you probably couldn’t have said if they had made a Garden Ruin Part 2. As it is, with Carried to Dust Calexico have hit the pinata squarely on the nose, and we are the lucky ones left to reap the candy they have left scattered beneath.
****
First published on rockfeedback.com. See it here.
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