Photo:
Calexico's previous output has occupied a unique territory drenched in mythic Americana, but on 'Garden Ruin' the band take a distinct turn towards more conventional forms and concerns. So much so, in fact, that on first listen their fifth full-length album appears to have something crucial missing, to the extent you’d suspect that Tucson, Arizona’s finest have devised their very own Zaireeka and you’re missing some of the CDs required to appreciate its full grandness.
Bear with it, though, and what initially sounds disappointingly short on the band’s usual jaw-dropping invention soon reveals its considerable catalogue of charms. The rich textures and lush arrangements tailor-made to soundtrack imaginary westerns of yore might be largely absent, but Calexico still offer an enticing alternative to the rigid stylistic palette and tune-shy dirges of much that passes off as alt. country these days. Only this time around the focus is on the songs rather than the sounds.
Perhaps it’s the influence of Iron & Wine’s Sam Beam, with whom Calexico toured and recorded last year’s excellent mini-album 'In The Reins', but the tunes on 'Garden Ruin' are the group’s most straight-forward to date, with the lovely ‘Bisbee Blues’ and the melancholy, soul-tinged pop brilliance of ‘Lucky Dime’ in particular flexing their newly pumped-up melodic muscle.
Another surprise is the group's fondness for cranking it up on the decibels department. No longer content with merely cruising atmospherically along the dusty main street of some old West border town of their imagination, Calexico, these days a "real" band with a stable six-piece line-up rather than a loose collective centred along mainstays Joey Burns and the consistently stunning percussionist John Convertino, occasionally switch to a fearsome gallop fuelled by snarling barbed-wire guitars and pummelling beats. This penchant for plugging in is essayed most potently on the desolate, drawn-out closing track ‘All Systems Red’, the heartbreaking poignancy and fierce, cacophonous coda resembling Neil Young’s gritty feedback workouts of which says much more about the band’s dismay at contemporary politics and office-holding war-mongers – another fresh ingredient added to the band’s pot on 'Garden Ruin' - than Burns’ vague if affecting lyrics can muster.
Add to this a few familiar touches – the sizzling mariachi flavours of ‘Roka (Danza de la maerte)’, the dust-blown balladry of the cello-driven, bittersweet ‘Yours And Mine’ and flashes of Calexico’s trademark widescreen sound bubbling just beneath the surface (the expertly nuanced ‘Cruel’, which could well be a hitherto unknown outtake from Love’s 'Forever Changes', the string sweeps at the end of ‘Panic Open String’) – and you’ve a platter practically oozing with pure class.
