Calexico
The Black Light

THE REVIEW

Tucson, Arizona.

This is where the music of the duo Joey Burns/John Convertino, otherwise known as Calexico, is born.
This logistical detail is essential to understand the music they express. Desert stretching for kilometers around them, Mexico is right there, a few steps over the border. And then that sun that cracks the stones, that burns everything. That sun that still shines and illuminates everything. And our duo (bass and percussion) knows those places well, so well that their music mirrors them, it is the desert in notes, scores of sunlit lands, frontier melodies. Calexico (could it be a mix between California and Mexico?) is capable of showing us the bright yet solitary life in that town lost in those sun-scorched lands. Here it is, you'll say, I've started rambling again about how music can transport us far away, how instruments take on new roles, and the poetry, and the melody...
OK, OK, I could tell you about the splendid initial overture, the instrumental "Gypsy's Curse," a concert for guitar, accordion, violin, and cello, or the rhythm of "fake fur" marked by Caribbean percussion, the wonderful "Over your shoulder," a magnificent instrumental ballad. Or I could tell you about the long service of the two Calexico in Giant Sand, or their collaborations with Friends Of Dean Martinez or with Lisa Germano...
But to what end? What use are technical details when their music speaks to us? When a "Frontera" projects us to a Mexican party, or "Minas de cobre" to a small concert in the middle of the desert, and still "Missing" in front of a campfire set on a starry night?

No, I leave technical reviews for other albums. Calexico is Arizona, is the frontier desert, the loneliness and brightness of those empty spaces. Nothing more.
It's up to you to judge my words, and I'm sure, Calexico will convince you...