Calexico...a really good one

Calexico is right back to form with their new record, Carried To Dust, which is out in about a week on Quarterstick. I was a little concerned about Garden Ruin in 2006, which seemed just a too smug and polished. Still Carried to Dust has more experiments, more genres and is generally more interesting...it's almost as good as my favorite, Feast of Wire.

Also, if you get a chance to go to see Calexico, take it. This is a great band. I've seen them live a couple of times and it was always wonderful...their sound guy is a genius, balancing all those instruments. Anyway, I'd recommend Carried to Dust to all Calexico lovers and, what the hell, just about everyone else, too.

Of course, I said all that with much more style in my review, which runs slightly ahead of the curve at Dusted today:

Calexico
Carried to Dust
Quarterstick

Calexico has always been best when it slips the leash. The group’s best albums are studded with brief, weird interludes of dub, jazz and unclassifiable experiment. John Convertino and Joey Burns’ most hummable songs contain oblique but jarring imagery. The weakest Calexico records – still pretty good – hew too closely to the middle of the road, populated solely with lapidary-polished cuts of AAA-friendly melody.

The good news is that Carried to Dust is a damned fine Calexico record. It is not as startling as 2003’s Feast of Wire or 1998’s The Black Light, but it is unpredictable and contrary. Where the band’s last record, Garden Ruin, seemed relentlessly on message and disappointingly conventional, Carried to Dust represents a refreshing return to eccentricity.

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The lovely and mysterious "Two Silver Trees"