Calexico is one hot diggity dog damn fine band!

[Davey]

I've been listening a lot lately to the Calexico guys and they sure have turned into a hot band. Had last year's Feast of Wire playing a couple times through this afternoon while doing some work on the computer*, and have to admit that I kind of underappreciated this one last year. Not that I didn't think it was a good album, it just never quite sunk in how good it is until more recently. I think it was Sloshy who named it his best of the year back then, and I still wouldn't go that far, but it's certainly moved up higher on my (imaginary) list since then. Seems like almost everything they work on has an air of class about it, from the last Neko Case album, to all those Giant Sand albums with Howe Gelb, to all the other work with people like Barbara Manning and Lisa Germano and Richard Buckner and so many others. Guess they've become a highly prized session team for their rhythmic talents, in addition to creating a ton of very interesting music for their own frequent releases. Joey Burns has even grown into a pretty decent singer, at least one that I enjoy listening to. Think I might have to play it again or maybe dig out The Black Light....





*gathering up some of my relatively recent reviews and adding them to a new mini-review page at my site - definitely need to update my comments on this one