Not for the first time has Calexico, America’s finest purveyors of authentic Southwest musical chili con blood’n’guts, made it on our Top Ten List, and Algiers was some kind of revelation. As we noted, “Algiers wasn’t recorded, as you might have expected, in the roiling sandstorm of North Africa, but the Louisiana precinct of the same name. And how does humidity leaven the Tucson-based band’s first album since the brilliant Carried To Dust from 2008? It actually doesn’t seem to have affected it much at all. Algiers may be the most radio friendly Calexico album to date, but it is still filled with enough slickrock mystery to animate a B. Traven novel, with all the humanity, though a lower body count, of something by Cormac McCarthy. The latter may have migrated, like so many others, from Appalachia to the Deep South to the Southwest Desert, the reverse route of Calexico on at least this album, but he always maintains an essential American talent for mayhem, and so do Calexico, as American as pico de gallo.”
Archive for “Algiers”
Tulip Frenzy’s #6 Best Album of 2012 Was Calexico’s “Algiers”
Posted in Uncategorized with tags "Algiers", Calexico, Tulip Frenzy Top Ten List on November 23, 2012 by johnbuckley100Calexico At 930 Club, Or The Evening Redness In The West
Posted in Uncategorized with tags "Algiers", Calexico on October 12, 2012 by johnbuckley100
iPhone 5
Calexico returned to D.C.’s 930 Club on a night when we might otherwise have been distracted. As we walked from the parking lot to the club, we could see in the living room of the condo nearby Joe Biden grasping the jejeune Paul Ryan in a hammerlock, giving him a noogie, and our heart was still beating fast from Jayson Werth’s 13-pitch at-bat that ended in a memorable walk-off, enabling our Nats to live another day. But by the time Joey Burns, John Convertino, and their ensemble were two songs into showcasing their glorious new album, Algiers, the aperture of our mind focused sharply on just what an American treasure this Arizona border band truly is.
They returned to D.C. with a harder edge than when they last showed up, in 2008, promoting the magnificent Carried To Dust. Where that album conjured Monument Valley spires, Anasazi mysteries, and a Mexican folkloric tradition, Algiers is a purer expression of pop craft, even as it’s purpose-built on top of south-of-the-border idioms. Listen to “Sinner By The Sea,” which they returned with for the first encore, to see what we mean: it starts like something you’d hear late at night in a Vera Cruz dancehall, but keeps a slow, garage-rock beat before efflorescing into a Chris-Isaaks-meets-the-Fleshtones bit of rock’n’roll magic. Last time ’round, Joey Burns played the lion’s share of guitar, with a pedal steel player and bassist the other stringed instrument supporters. This time around, the core of Burns and Convertino returned with the multitalented Mexicali horns, but also a smokin’ young guitarist who seemed as adept on lap pedal as lead. Convertino is the most confident drummer who ever led a band from so small a geographic section of his drum kit. And the dexterity of the musicians switching between horns and accordions and keyboards was like watching an All Star team shift the infield.
So many traditions come together on stage with Calexico. Alt-rock and folk meet Tijuana Brass, conjunto, and Colorado Delta blues. There aren’t a lot of American bands that can convey such a sense of mystery. Creedence Clearwater could do it by evoking Louisiana Delta mythos from the streets of Oakland. Calexico is closer to the Blood Meridian archetypes they evoke, both physically, given their locus from Tucson, and in spirit, with a cross-border collection of ace musicians. Last night at 930 they had our full attention, as they should.
Calexico’s “Algiers” Was Actually Last Week’s Best Album Release
Posted in Music with tags "Algiers", Bob Dylan, Calexico, Tempest on September 17, 2012 by johnbuckley100Bob Dylan’s Tempest garnered all the acclaim, but the music we’ve been listening to most in Tulip Frenzy World HQ is Calexico’s Algiers. It’s not that we don’t want to listen to 14-minute songs about the Titanic (and 40-minutes or so of the Bobster’s album is a superb return to the prior form that Together Through Life suggested had been reduced to bar-band renderings of boozy blues.) It is that one of America’s great bands has produced a career highlight album filled with gorgeous melodies and thrilling beats we cannot for the life of us get out of our head.
The story of Bob Dylan and Calexico can maybe framed as the rivalry between America’s two great rivers. The Mississippi is both lubricant and muse, Ole Man River. But the Colorado — which (before Lake Powell and Lake Mead stole its bounty for thirsty Western cities and greedy farmers) at least used to empty silted runoff from the Rockies via a Mexican terminus — forms an almost entirely separate second musical delta. Having been raised near its source, the septuagenarian Dylan might still be working the loamy riverbank of the Mississippi, but the Southwestern-based Calexico instead has worked the parched seams of the Colorado, which just happens to be America’s greatest artist. (Editor: huh? Reply: Compare how the Grand Canyon is sculpted to anything produced by Winslow Homer or Jackson Pollack, and you’ll see why we accord it that status.) As between Tabasco and Salsa, America is one big tasty musical treat, but it’s only when you think about the grand tradition of our nation West of the Mississippi that Calexico’s Mexicali-tinged rock’n’roll music begins to claim its place. The Mississippi, with its blues and jazz and the gumbo and chitlin’ stewpot that cooked up rock’n’roll is where we’ve been; the Mariachi and Spaghetti Western fuzz-guitar twang that inspired Joey Burns and John Convertino may actually be where we’re going.
Yet Algiers wasn’t recorded, as you might have expected, in the roiling sandstorm of North Africa, but the Louisiana precinct of the same name. And how does humidity leaven the Tucson-based band’s first album since the brilliant Carried To Dust from 2008? It actually doesn’t seem to have affected it much at all. Algiers may be the most radio friendly Calexico album to date, but it is still filled with enough slickrock mystery to animate a B. Traven novel, with all the humanity, though a lower body count, of something by Cormac McCarthy. The latter may have migrated, like so many others, from Appalachia to the Deep South to the Southwest Desert, the reverse route of Calexico on at least this album, but he always maintains an essential American talent for mayhem, and so do Calexico, as American as pico de gallo.
Algiers is what’s been flowing through our ear buds, flowing with maybe just a bit more volume due to the heavier rainfall to be found east of the 100th Meridien. It’s good to have Calexico back, with their rocking American folk songs that flow from an alternative American tradition.
Tulip Frenzy 