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Listening to this somewhat old album inevitably makes me think of the hot, dry wind of the American desert, in that stunning and evocative middle ground made from the contrast between the north of Mexico and the south of the United States, or between the north of poverty and the south of opulence, or the other way around, whichever you prefer.
The wind carries with it these gritty sounds, collected from the same roads individually traveled by Howe Gelb, Lisa Germano, and Joey Burns, and sweeps them along now gently, now violently, to vastly different yet so similar places that the amalgam that emerges is so incoherent and at the same time cohesive that one can afford to ignore that in certain parts it seems like listening to Kim Deal, in others the more classic desert rock of early Calexico, a "genre" we love very much, still others timid hints of jazz, up to hits like "Never See It Coming" (where have I heard that before?).
The voices are highly evocative, both Lisa Germano (did I already compare her to Kim Deal?) and Howe Gelb (but Burns sings too), the instruments and sounds are absolutely carried by the same mystical wind that accompanies the album: Germano's violin, the guitars, the drums... everything suggests that this could have been the beginning of something.
Instead, after this "breath" of Slush, they returned to their respective paths, a pity. I wish I could discover albums like this much more often.
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