Since January, I’ve been listening to a lot of Calexico. I started by listening to Feast of Wire, and have moved back in time through Hot Rail, and The Black Light. It’s a good thing I don’t shop for music by the cover, because I would have never picked these albums up with their altogether ghetto Oakland look. The music within is very different, and after a few months of listening, I’m ready to say this is one of the best bands making music. Their sound speaks to everything that is west of here, north of Mexico, and east of California. That is – it speaks to the West, its past and its present, more than anything I’ve ever heard. There are epic melodies about a magical land that didn’t last – “rivers of empires”, references to the history of the American West, and more. Yet the music gives off the same type of heartache I get when I drive across the western plain – evidence that the skeleton of an ancient America is still visible (and gorgeous for that matter), but dead nonetheless. These dazzling little odes are intertwined with influences from below – the horns of Mexico, and rock from places far beyond Tucson. Most of all, they are made personal by stories of love, loss, hope and wonder. The same type of stuff my mind is grinding through as I fly along the Western earth. A good example, is fromDrenched, a track from Hot Rail:
Riding through nostalgia, shaking memories by the mile
the city lights are closing in on him
the distance grows shorter for a while.
And he wonders what dreams fill her heart
and wonders if what they had could ever be sparked
“The roads never lead where they’re supposed to go,”
that’s what he tells himself before he lets it go.