Calexico
Even My Sure Things Fall Through
I'll admit it: There are some holes in my musical education. I won't enumerate them here (boss says these reviews are supposed to stay under 150 words) but suffice it to say that one thing I do know about is etymology. Language. Like, I know what a "chorus pedal" does; I know what "melisma" is; and I know that "EP" means "Extended Play," generally indicating a listening package containing few songs, built around a single. Well, this new Calexico EP is 37 minutes long — album-length, but not an album. It's a collection of B-sides, remixes of cuts from 2000's The Hot Rail, and sundry other previously unreleased material.
But, hey, it certainly has a single.
"Crystal Frontier," is a cumbia-fueled, rock 'n' rabblerousing epic, based on Carlos Fuentes' novel of the same name; in it, Joey Burns slyly, softly, matter-of-factly spins the sad tales of three lives unfolding on the U.S.-Mexico border, over John Covertino's confident percussion and the pyretic accompaniment of the Mariachi Luz de Luna — violin, horns, guitarron and contrabass. (Burns also gives the song a solo acoustic treatment later on in the disc.)
Tucson's Burns and Covertino, mates in Giant Sand and Friends of Dean Martinez, form Calexico's core. If you're not familiar with this Tucson twosome yet, then this is actually an excellent place to start. The Hot Rail found them being a tad too ambitious, joined by many musical friends adding nuances to Calexico's garage-in-the-middle-of-the-desert sound — essentially, moving the band out of the Mojave Desert and into the Painted one, maybe a bit too soon.
Even My Sure Things Pull Through exhibits further the band's expanding palette, as well as disassembling the garage so Calexico can reach for the sky with a clearer line of sight. A tender cover of The American Music Club's "Chanel No. 5" is the very picture of high lonesome. The CD closes with an ambient, gong-guitar-and-radio-reinvention of "Hard Hat" and perhaps the most surprising track of all is a sparse, trip-hop version of "Untitled III," as remixed by Two Lone Swordsmen.
One of the totally new tracks, "The Crooked Road and the Briar," is fairly straight-ahead alt-country, opening up in a cloud of guitar feedback and then moving effortlessly into twangy rock, obviously inspired by Covertino and Burns' work with Richard Buckner.
The EP is a bit scattered, but it's all so very nice.
Finally, the disc contains three Quicktime videos: one for "Crystal Frontier," another for The Hot Rail's "Ballad of Cable Hogue" (a rather campy, Western-noir melodrama starring a solemn, horse-riding Burns getting done oh-so-wrong by a French lady) and one for the title track to 1998's The Black Light. I'm sure Calexico meant for this to just be an EP, just like I meant this review to be under 150 words. But I guess we've both got too much to say on the subject. (Quarterstick, www.southern.net)
—Stefanie Kalem
This article appears in May 3-9, 2001.