CD Review: Calexico's Garden Ruin
The influence of Calexico's recent collaborations with bands like Wilco and Iron and Wine is immediately evident on the band's newest album, Garden Ruin. Joey Burns and John Convertino, the duo that serves as the group's locus, play down their Latin influences and borrow a few tricks from their new friends. With this new direction, the taut moodiness of the album is dressed up in the appealing pop that their old material seemed to shy away from. Overall, the new suit fits, although it could've used some minor alterations on a few tracks.
Burns has the dubious honor of having a great voice whose emotive quality conveys a similar, gritty melodrama as that of Train's lead singer. Thanks to some knob-twiddling and provocative arrangement, however, this album maintains focus on the band as a whole. It's something Calexico has always been good at, both live and in the studio. Even on more intimate tracks such as "Smash" and "Yours and Mine," the integration, however sparse, of each instrument into the track keeps each member on the level.
It's a subtly diverse disc. The band's cohesion takes the edge off of the dramatic changes in mood, both between and inside each song. For fans of their back catalog there's "Roka," a sensual duet with a gorgeous melodic hook, and "Letter to Bowie Knife," which barrels along, propelled by a choir of percussive strumming. "Panic Open String" can't help but pay homage to Jeff Tweedy with its octave-stacked vocals and rolling bassline as glockenspiels and synths gracefully pull the music forward. But then there's "Nom De Plume" which sounds like all the tracks we skipped forward through on the last two Pinetop Seven albums. And it's sung in French. Why in hell do bands do this? It's a solid way to turn off listeners sensitive to any hint of pretension. Luckily, "All Systems Red" reasserts balance on the album. A melancholy anthem that owes a little to your favorite guilty pleasure moments on a Coldplay song, it's both a thrilling and satisfying conclusion to the terrific, although slightly flawed, album.
Calexico is a great alt-country-ish band straining impatiently against the boundaries of their genre, and there's a lot to like on Garden Ruin. If you peed a little when you first heard Wilco's Being There, and were thrilled by that band's new directions, be sure and pick this one up. Evidently, the musical wanderlust is contagious.
