Carried to Dust | Calexico | Calexico's Finest Album To Date

Carried to Dust | Calexico | Best Band in America

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Carried to Dust

	Carried to Dust Calexico Quarterstick, 2008 average customer review:based on 17 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Calexico's Finest Album To Date

I'll admit I have been a huge Calexico fan for awhile, but each of their albums have had a few songs that just didn't do it for me. Not so with this album, which could alternately be titled "The Best Elements Of Calexico From Start To Finish." If you're looking for Calexico's trademark mariachi-style trumpets married to a modern techno beat, you'll find it in "Inspiracion" and the guitar-heavy "El Gatillo". "Two Silver Trees" is a superb effort that combines some seriously seductive hooks with the softer side of Joey Burns' amazing vocals. Like many people, I'm eagerly waiting for another Iron & Wine/Calexico collaboration, so I was delighted to listen to Sam Beam's guest contribution on the exquisitely gorgeous "House of Valparaiso". As a whole I think Calexico take a step or two toward the pop side of things, but let me stress that this is not a bad thing in the least. ALL of the classic elements of the band are here in spades - the creative instrumentation, thoughtful lyrics, and wonderful vocal arrangements. This makes for one heck of a fine album, and an extremely enjoyable one at that.

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Best Band in America

Easily in the top 10 of '08. Burns and Convertino are at the top of their collective game with this batch of tunes. As another reviewer stated- seeing this band perform live is quite the musical treat. Next to the word "eclectic" in the dictionary stands a picture of the band Calexico. You spaghetti western? You got it. You want southern rock? Sure. You want pop? No problem.

A Fabulous Band and Sound

What great music and musicians. I have been a fan for a long time. This album is among their best with its alternative sound as they blend so many different genres deliciously. Reminds me a bit of my favorite singer-songwriter Arrica Rose. Her latest album La La Lost beautifully blends indie, pop, altcountry into great CD.

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Takes You Down a Dusty Western Road

I just picked this up, and I'm really happy I did. Solid musicianship crafted with a southwestern soul. If you want to taste the southern Arizona desert, this will take you there.

Frankenstein folk

The heart of Calexico, Arizonians Joey Burns and John Convertino, have always played music which is difficult to nail down into one category or another. Like the border town from which their name originates, Calexico's music is a mish-mash blend of California and Mexico, Western and spaghetti western, good and evil, grounded and uprooted.

Some might get the idea that the "Mexican" influence means Calexico's music sounds like a failed Taco Bell ad campaign, colorful tacos and sombreros mandatory. They'd be dead wrong. It's more like the self-assured, world-wise output of Chile's storied and excellent Inti-Illimani---based upon certain elements, but ever steering the ship into uncharted waters---or the alternative soundtrack to Tarantino's awful Kill Bill movies (no offense to Morricone intended).

Perhaps the defining Calexican moment was singing and dancing along with their "Sunken Waltz" (from 2003's near-flawless Feast of Wire), a modern folk-pop fairytale about a maverick who builds a machine to sink California into the Pacific Ocean. Carried to Dust's opening cut, "Victor Jara's Hands," crackles with the same experimental folk energy. Expert Latin horns and drumwork infuse it with an elusive mystique uncommon to folk Americana. Elsewhere, slower cuts like "Falling From Sleeves" or the closing "Contention City" deliver more pastoral vibes.

The album is a "return to non-form" of sorts, as Feast of Wire was the biggest step outside of a comfort zone evident on other Calexico records, with tracks like the introductory subsonic rumbling of "Pepita," or the truly unique "Quattro (World Drifts In)." Nothing on Carried to Dust quite matches up to these moments in terms of strangeness, but it is certainly a more varied and gratifying effort than the lackluster Garden Ruin (2006).

Fans of this intoxicating blend of playing Frankenstein with American folk rock may also enjoy the oddity of Slim Cessna's Auto Club or Munly & The Lee Lewis Harlots, purveyors of a rollicking new "Denver sound"---a heady mixture of spooky Americana and psychopunk/rockabilly.

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reviews: 1, 2, page 3, 4

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