Calexico folks-up Emo’s for free

Apr. 13-16, 2006

By Doug Freeman
Daily Texan Staff

Photo courtesy of Tag Team Media by Wendy Lynch

The Arizona-based Calexico stops by Emo’s Saturday for an early, free acoustic performance. this weekend.

The announcement that Calexico will be playing a free show at Emo’s this weekend was a surprise for many of their fans. But perhaps even more surprising is that the show will be acoustic and without founding percussionist John Convertino.

The acoustic format seems counter-intuitive given the decidedly more rock-oriented direction of their most recent release, Garden Ruin. On the new album, the Tucson-based band infuses a stronger alt-country sound into their usual southwestern flavored ballads. While the familiar flashes of horns and Spanish flamenco that have made their music distinct are still present, the songs also reflect the heavy influence of former tour partner Wilco.

The fifth official album from the band, Garden Ruin, is also their first not to include an instrumental track. The lack mirrors the album’s move towards more explicitly standard song arrangements, a characteristic that makes it easily the band’s most accessible release. Songs like “Letter to a Bowie Knife” and “Lucky Dime” take on an uncharacteristically pop feel, while the final track, “All Systems Red,” bursts into swirling, guitar-driven rock.

The album is already drawing a new set of fans to Calexico’s music, but even those that have followed the band since their lo-fi 1997 debut Spoke, will likely not be disappointed. Joey Burns’ smooth and sensual vocals still suffuse the songs with a delicate yearning that even the heavier guitars can’t drown. And, songs like “Smash” offer the lugubriously plodding counter-part to the upbeat numbers. Likewise, “Nom de Plume” hearkens back to the noir-drenched 1998 album The Black Light, while “Roka (Danza de la muerte)” recalls the mariachi influences on Hot Rail.

Longtime fans are already familiar with the amorphous tendencies of the band that have allowed them to cull the improbably disparate influences into their music and have led to some of the most distinctive covers and collaborations in music today. Calexico’s version of Love’s 1967 classic “Alone Again Or” gained them national airplay despite its EP-only release, and the band has worked with artists ranging from Neko Case to Nancy Sinatra.

Last year, they teamed up with Sam Beam of Iron and Wine to produce the brilliant In the Reins EP.

Harnessing Calexico’s southwestern flare and Beam’s intimately literary narratives, the album pushed both groups in new and impressive directions. Their live show, which came through Austin last fall, even offered stunning reworkings of the Velvet Underground’s “All Tomorrow’s Parties” and the Rolling Stones’ “Wild Horses.” Calexico will continue their tour with Iron and Wine through Europe later this month.

This weekend’s acoustic show undoubtedly will display Beam’s recent influence on the band as much as Garden Ruin does Wilco’s. But such incorporations have come to be expected from a band whose unique sound seems simultaneously to absorb and defy genres. But Saturday’s performance is an increasingly rare opportunity to see Calexico in such an intimate setting, and is even rarer considering the free admission.

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