Calexico co-founders Joey Burns and John Convertino hear the world differently than most people. After all, not everyone would have imagined that surf guitar reverb would sound so at home beneath a blast of mariachi trumpet … or that an acoustic Portuguese fado wouldn’t clash with an electric Norteño rave-up … or that the lonesome cry of a pedal steel guitar could flourish with a symphony orchestra’s string section.
Feast of Wire (due out Feb. 18) continues the Tucson, Ariz., band’s tradition of musical alchemy. While their proximity to the Mexican border is still a strong influence, Calexico has raised the ante this time with more song styles, instruments and collaborators. The result further proves that variety—in the hands of the right alchemists—provides just the right musical chemistry.
“[Calexico] is kind of an international clubhouse of instruments and backgrounds,” says Burns, the soft-spoken singer and guitarist who founded the group with Convertino in 1996. “We just mix it up and stick it in the blender and push ‘chop.’”
The record that emerged from the blender—their fourth official full-length—is sonically broader. The band added some electronic touches here and there, most noticeably on the Latin Playboys-like “Attack El Robot! Attack!” and augmented their jazz repertoire with a Gil Evans/Charles Mingus-influenced number, “Crumble.” The strings from the Tucson Symphony Orchestra contributed to the Ennio Morricone-flavored “Close Behind,” and “Not Even Stevie Nicks” sounds like Calexico’s first indie pop song.
Other tunes on Feast of Wire suggest more traditional Calexico fare, both thematically and sonically. “Quattro (World Drifts In)” depicts the seemingly inevitable demise of the Tarahumara, a native Indian tribe of the Sierra Madres Occidental range in Mexico who are losing their unique culture—and often their lives—to exploitative drug traffickers. The song begins with a foreboding guitar riff, augmented by a Native American drum beat and maracas, and a percussive deadened-string strum on an acoustic. Various electric guitars then add layers upon layers of call-and-response lines on the simple five-note repetition; trumpets and pedal steel then join the controlled chaos, bemoaning the unfolding tragedy that Burns recounts in his wistful tone.
The theme of the opening cut, “Sunken Waltz,” is urban sprawl and the coming southwestern water crises—a standard topic for a band whose motto is, “Our Soil, Our Strength.” Burns suggests that “just growing up in the West and watching the sprawl gradually filter out into the landscape” was practically traumatizing. In many of these songs, a typical protagonist suddenly turns his back on a bleak and corrupt suburban existence (it’s Los Angeles in this song, as Burns alludes to Mike Davis’ brilliant underground history of that town, City of Quartz). Thoreau-like, the Calexican character heads back into nature (typically the desert or mountains) and endures soul-purifying hardships, often while civilization is getting hammered by some cataclysmic event: in “Sunken Waltz,” a flood. Sometimes the protagonists emerge alive and fundamentally altered by epiphany; sometimes they don’t emerge at all.
The often brutal lives of illegal immigrants are another topic Calexico has explored before, most notably in their single “Crystal Frontier” (available on the 2001 EP, Even My Sure Things Fall Through). “Across the Wire” was inspired by Luis Urrea’s book of the same title, and musically, by Burns’ immersion in a recorded anthology of Mexican folk music. “It’s a distillation of many different styles that we’ve been playing in Calexico for a while,” Burns says of the song. “Part Norteño button accordion, western pedal steel, mariachi trumpets and violins, and twang baritone guitar.”
On a lighter note, the banda-flavored “Güero Canelo,” celebrates a Tucson eatery’s delectable entrees while a Casio synthesizer, baritone guitar and “low-rider bass thump” capture “what it feels like riding down to South Tucson on a Saturday night,” says Burns, who, like a lot of musicians, has an uncanny knack of knowing where the best Mexican food is in any town.
As on all Calexico records, a handful of sultry instrumentals tie everything together, serving as segues, emotional rest stops or picturesque vignettes. “Pepita” suggests more Native American influences, “Dub Latina” combines modern and traditional touches, and the minimalist sketch, “The Book & the Canal,” hints at classical pianist Erik Satie (a previous Calexico influence) and jazz giants Art Tatum or Bud Powell—which one, Burns remains undecided. Perhaps both.
Given the somber nature of some of the subject matter, many of the songs on Feast of Wire are unashamedly melancholic. But all are emphatically vibrant and, as is the case with all good art, ultimately uplifting and spiritually fulfilling because of the beauty of their construction and the honesty of their execution. As Burns sees it, “there are moments of light at the end of the tunnel” that always makes the journey worthwhile.
In the past, Burns and Convertino set up camp in the studio with all their instruments and conjured up most of the album alone, bringing in the hired guns in later to put the finishing touches on it. This time, the musicians with whom they had been touring for over a year participated from the start. They included native Germans Martin Wenk (accordion/trumpet/guitar/synthesizers) and Volker Zander (bass/vibes), Mexican-American Jacob Valenzuela (keys/trumpet/vibes) and—on loan from Lambchop—Nashville resident Paul Niehaus (pedal steel/acoustic guitars).