Calexico

The story of Calexico begins with an album released both as Peel/Pulp (Haus Musik, 1996), credited to Spoke, and as Spoke (Quarterstick, 1997), credited to Calexico, which redrew the routes of modern roots rock by proposing an improbable bridge between the romantic generation of Duane Eddy and the nihilistic one of the Palace Brothers.

Behind these transformations is the rhythm section of Joey Burns (bass) and John Convertino (percussion), who had been accompanying Howe Gelb in Giant Sand for six years, and who also collaborated with Friends Of Dean Martinez and especially with Lisa Germano. Here they also alternate on guitar and accordion. From the "slo-core" of Low Expectations and the instrumental Paper Route to the rustic folk, mixing Mexico and Europe in a haphazard way, of Mazurra, Spokes, and Wash, from the Dylan-like lament of Point Vicente to the heartfelt and martial ballads of Sanchez and Removed, the duo's epic follows the conventions of desert rock, full of sun and time. The sly primitivism of Giant Sand can be recognized in bouncing ballads like Slag and Glimpse. A vibrant surf instrumental, Scout, pierces through the haze of torpor. The finale is instead metaphysical: two minutes of Japanese percussion (Hitch), followed by the sunny vision of the instrumental Stinging Nettle, complete with cello. They also released the single with Spark (Wabana), a Palace Brothers-style country, and Ride, a spaghetti western with Duane Eddy-style twang, as well as the single Lost In Space (All City).

The overture of Calexico's second album, The Black Light (Touch And Go, 1998), is entrusted to the languid instrumental Gypsy's Curse, imbued with French and Central European moods, orchestrated for guitar twang, accordion, violin, and cello, continuing the happy vein of the first album, which was also marked by two or three high-caliber instrumental compositions. Fake Fur goes even further, with a Caribbean percussion rhythm on which the double bass weaves rumba figures, and the guitar murmurs quietly like a music box.
The little vice of the first album has thus evolved into an authorial style. The rest of the album is scattered with brief instrumental interludes, which, on closer inspection, form the substance, not the shell: the classical-style madrigal for vibraphone and cello in Where Water Flows, the drunken polka for accordion, cello, and circus bass drum in Sideshow, the nocturnal Cuban fanfare of Chach led by Rigo Pedroza's mariachi trumpet, the Old Man Waltz lamented over the most pathetic accordion chords. Over Your Shoulder finally retraces its steps, taking up the country cadence of early Neil Young and Bob Dylan's Desire.
These are not merely playful experiments—they are often masterpieces of introspection. For example, the epic and poignant melody of Minas De Cobre, set to a flamenco rhythm, conceals a metaphysical duet of trumpet and violin. The album ventures into avant-garde music with the final track, Frontera, which nonetheless concludes with a festive fanfare (a stark contrast to the mood of the other tracks). These are episodes of a bold incursion into the realms of serious music, directed and performed in an austere, measured tone by a sui generis chamber ensemble—a sort of Penguin Café Orchestra from the Arizona desert. They are apocryphal scores of a contemporary classical composer who has spent too many evenings in nightclubs. At the same time, they are philosophical monologues and dialogues, constantly chasing a meaning that transcends music.
The songs are orchestrated just as evocatively. They simply must take the vocals into account, and they do so in the most eccentric way possible. The only time the duo crafts a ballad as expected—half Walkabouts, half Giant Sand—is The Ride, a Broadway-style aria sprinkled with Mediterranean, Balkan, and Peruvian references, with an instrumental bridge of vibraphone and timpani. Entirely askew is The Black Light, hummed sotto voce in the most sibylline Lou Reed register, accompanied by sparse guitar chords and casual drum beats. From there emerges the existential slow-melody of Missing, a sparkling tune rendered with tender melancholy on the border between Donovan and Palace Brothers. The shadow never lifts, even when the music plunges into a Cuban dance hall again in Stray, with an ever-more despondent trumpet. The fairy tale of Trigger makes use of that heap of Spanish, Peruvian, and other sounds. The songs unfold like music boxes, almost mechanical in their melodiousness, yet weakened by the funeral tolls of the instruments.
A perfect album, therefore—both melodically and harmonically, atmospheric and poignant, experimental and classical.

Calexico's third album, Hot Rail (Quarterstick, 2000), opens with a horn-driven mariachi instrumental novelty (El Picador), then flies away on Burns' Ballad Of Cable Hogue, inspired by the calm epics of spaghetti-western movies but drenched in psychedelic reverbs and accented by accordion and horns. Fade, one of their longest compositions ever at over seven minutes, is a breezy whisper over a hypnotic, suspenseful cool-jazz jamming (Isotope 217's Rob Mazurek on cornet), as if Tim Buckley fronted Miles Davis' quintet. Burns' languid ballad Service And Repair best summarizes the quiet mood of the album and the cosmic spaghetti-western soundtrack of Sonic Wind best embodies the new aesthetics. Gone are the cinematic soundscapes inspired by the desert (and the few surviving examples display an ambient, even funereal quality, as in Untitled III and Mid-Town). Calexico have opted for a more intimate form of expression, for a stylish, somber, bleak ballad that draws from both psychedelic and ambient music. Their country roots are complemented by a tinge of mariachi Appropriately, the album closing tracks are another energetic mariachi dance (Tres Avisos) and a solemn, eastern-flavored, quasi new age chamber piece (Hot Rail, that again recalls Tim Buckley's dreamiest scores). The duo seems torn between a philosophical soul and a populist soul, and the former is slowly taking over. This is their less eccentric work and their most serious. Calexico is leaving rock music and approaching classical music.

Even My Sure Things Fall Through (Touch & Go, 2001) is a strange kind of mini-album that offers eight rare and unreleased tracks plus three videos. The songs are a marvel of sophistication. It hardly sounds like the old Calexico. Their sound is approaching the smooth, polished, crystalline transparency of acoustic fusion ensembles. Trumpet and vibes give the remix of Sonic Wind a jazz feeling that bossanova steps reinforce. Hard Hat is an ambiente/concrete remix of Hot Rail with samples of gongs, guitars and radio voices. Crystal Frontier is a high-caliber tex-mex novelty, replete with festive horns fanfare, feverish string section, and even dub-style reverbs.

The Calexico duo is also behind ABBC, a supergroup formed with a French duo. Tete A Tete (Cargo, 2001) is their first album.

Aerocalexico (Calexico, 2001) collects outtakes, alternate versions and B-sides.

Temperature-wise, Feast of Wire (Quarterstick, 2003) is cold, whereas previous Calexico albums were hot (desert hot). This is an album of film-noir gloom, not of spaghetti-western trance. The duo steered away from the hallucinated, oneiric mariachi of their previous works and delved into a new, austere form of music. The bleak Quattro, a hybrid of bossanova, mariachi and country, and the majestic Black Heart, the most poignant song on the album, are the typical of Calexico's new mood. By the same token, the Latin-pop Latin flavor of Sunken Waltz, Woven Birds and Across the Wire is used to unfold stark folk parables. Whipping the Horse's Eyes and especially the closing instrumental, No Doze, offer chamber music for desert landscapes, but in an elegy-like format. The darker underpinning favors a broader and deeper role for jazz, as proven by two of the instrumental tracks, Dub Latina and especially the Miles Davis-ian Crumble. The old Calexico sound is alive and well in the instrumentals Guero Canelo, Close Behind and Pepita, Attack el Robot Attack is a lively and demented electronic novelty, and the folk-rock chestnut Not Even Stevie Nicks is not only light but even catchy. However, these are merely blips on a radar screen that shows mostly a flat signal.
Joey Burns has matured as a singer, running the gamut from falsetto to croon, from whisper to tenor, and his voice now commands as much respect as the instrumental counterpoint.
The biggest limitation to Calexico's music lies still with the duo's stubborn determination to keep track length to a minimum. They make a point of barely sketching an atmosphere, and then going on to the next one. One is left to admire the dots in the sky, but also to wonder what could be the overall cosmic tapestry.

Convict Pool (Quarterstick, 2004) is a six-song EP featuring three covers and three originals.

John Convertino's solo debut Ragland (Sommerweg, 2005) is a piano album.

In The Reins (Overcoat, 2005) was a collaboration with singer-songwriter Iron And Wine.

The transition from instrumental atmospheric combo to folk-rock group was completed by Garden Ruin (Quarterstick, 2006), a collection of faceless radio-friendly songs that rely on Burns' voice as much as the band's instrumentals used to rely on mariachi horns. In one case they border on Brit-pop (Lucky Dime), and in many cases they border on clumsy wanna-be Brit-pop ditties (Cruel, All Systems Red, Panic Open String, Roka). Except for a brief moment in which they echo Neil Young (Letter to Bowie Knife) and a brief moment in which they embrace melodramatic post-rock (All Systems Red), the new course simply sounds amateurish.

Carried To Dust (Quarterstick, 2008) had too many collaborators (besides more or stable extras Paul Niehaus on steel guitar, Jacob Valenzuela on keyboards and trumpet, Martin Wenk on accordion, and Volker Zander on standup bass) to be a real Calexico album or, for that matter, to be a unified album. It sounds (and it was) more like a collection of occasions, each devoted to a different style and mood. A few pieces are close to breathtaking (Two Silver Trees, El Gatillo, The News About William), but others sound repetitive or redundant.

Circo (2010) and The Guard (2011) were movie soundtracks.

Algiers (City Slang, 2012) flirts with elegant but stale cocktail-lounge Latin pop-jazz (Fortune Teller, Maybe on Monday) and boasts some inspired lyrics ("There´s a piano playing on the ocean floor between Havana and New Orleans/ drummin´ a requiem for the dead and the souls hanging on every poets' prayer" from Sinner In The Sea, with Sergio Mendoza on piano and Jacob Valenzuela on trumpet).

Spiritoso (2012) is a version of Algiers performed with symphony orchestras (the Radio Symphonie Orchester Wien and the Deutsches Filmorchester Babelsberg). It also includes an eight-minute version of the old single Crystal Frontier (2000).

Edge of The Sun (City Slang, 2015) continued the trajectory towards the middle-of-the-road melodic song with Tapping on the Line (a duet with Neko Case) and especially the synth-tinged Falling From the Sky. Sergio Mendoza plays mellotron, percussion, piano, organ, vibraphone, vihuela, accordion and Ukulele. Jacob Venezuela contributes his trumpet and Martin Wenk his synth.

Expanded to a septet, they recorded their worst album yet, The Thread That Keeps Us (City Slang, 2018). They ruin everything they touch, and, when they don't serve trite roots-rock, they seem schizophrenically torn between garage-rock (The End of the World, Dead in the Water) and dance music (the synth-driven reggae-tinged Under the Wheels and Another Space).

Years to Burn (2020) was a collaboration with Iron And Wine (Sam Beam), with the latter dominating most of the proceedings except for the eight-minute The Bitter Suite, which is really a Burns creation with Jacob Venezuela's trumpet stealing the show.

Seasonal Shift (City Slang, 2020) is a Christmas album full of covers.

The trio of Sergio Mendoza, Joey Burns and John Convertino devoted El Mirador (2022) to Latin music (cumbia, mambo, rancheras, mariachi). The album mainly belongs to keyboardist, accordion player and percussionist Sergio Mendoza, leader of the Orkesta Mendoza that recorded Mambo Mexicano (2012), co-produced by Joey Burns, La Rienda (2014), Vamos A Guarachar (2016), La Caminadora (2018) and Curandero (2020).