Tuesday 16 April 2013


Calexico - Algiers

  • Calexico - Algiers
For a band who are renowned for dipping into a vast plethora of styles, ranging from mariachi to country, gypsy jazz to indie rock, Calexico somehow manage to sound immediate and poignant, without sounded blurred or confused. Take ‘Algiers’, their seventh album. It could be easy to become tangled in the ever changing blend of styles, from the indie folk of ‘Fortune Teller’ to the bossa nova of ‘No Te Vayas’, yet Joey Burns and John Convertino’s music hopping is so seamless and subtle that it works.
As it goes it works rather beautifully. 'Splitter' is a rumbling folk-pop song, driven by chugging guitars and laced with keening horns, it does what every good folk song should, locking into that feeling of possibilities and adventure waiting just around the corner.
Algiers is named after the part of New Orleans where Burns and Convertino used to work, a place which Burns has described as “strong and bold, soulful to the core, but surrounded by a sea of darkness.” He could’ve been describing ‘Sinner in the Sea’, a haunting blues number where Burns sings with a devilish menace to the accompanying off-beat drums of Covertino – you don’t have to try hard to imagine it being played in a smoky rundown blues club in New Orleans.
The numerous styles explored and images evoked gives their sound a film-like quality. It probably explains why of the last three records released two have been film soundtracks; ‘The Guard’ and ‘Circo’ – two films so far apart that it only accentuates Calexico’s versatility, if that ever needed doing. It is their ability to enthral and entice that forms the strength of the album; the Spanish sounding ‘Puerto’ is held together by Burns’s alluring vocals, while the soaring slide-guitar and undulating strings sweep through closing track, The Vanishing Mind, ending the album on a tender, somewhat sorrowful, note.
Having been around since the mid-90s Calexico still have the capability to enrapture and captivate their listeners while sounding refreshingly original; not bad going for a seventh album.
8/10
By . Tweets at @herbert_sam
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