Calexico - Carried to Dust review

Originally posted at www.loudandquiet.com

Ten years on from Calexico’s second (although you could argue, first “proper”) record, ‘The Black Light’, the multi-talented duo that is Joey Burns and John Convertino, alongside a rag-tag bunch of musicians whose names are only uncovered by those brave explorers of the CD sleeve, have returned to their roots with their sixth “proper” album ‘Carried to Dust’.

One aspect of Calexico you can never escape from is their fixation with travelling. Always in a state of flux, they’re constantly on the road, trekking to a destination, but leaving the listener never sure if they actually reached it. However, rather than settling down and playing I-Spy the group have sound-tracked their travels and brought us lucky listeners some very special albums over the last 12 years.

‘Carried to Dust’’s album art work presents a young woman, eyes fixed on the road, heading towards a highway that you can’t quite make out. The car is clear as day, but that ever stretching road just escapes us somehow. Fragmented and mystical, it’s not there. Bear this in mind when listening to album closer ‘Contention City’ and notice that dark feeling in your stomach enveloping you. That’s what Calexico must feel every time they hit the long road and press record, and they are inviting you to feel it too. However, let’s hold that record button for now and instead opt for rewind, so we can find out the inner-workings of ‘Carried to Dust’ and more about this infinite trip. Rather than starting the journey with the band, the listener is simply a hitch-hiker; picked up from one point on the map and dropped at another with the title track marking the entry into the hot, stuffy desert. While a geographical description may seem odd for music, this seems to be exactly what Calexico are aiming for - with all of their previous bodies of work we have been picked up and dropped off. Sure, we joined in with some of the conversations along the way and even felt emotionally linked, but we were always missing parts of the puzzle…We were never always in their car, heading towards the horizon, we simply travelled from point A to B and were then left to our own devices on the roadside as the band sped away into the ever-reaching distance.

So, if this album has one specific motif, it’s of dangerous journeys into the heart of the sandstorm. Vocalist, Joey Burns, has a very distinct whiff of Leonard Cohen about him and if it can be pin-pointed to a particular Cohen-moment, it’s ‘Waiting for a Miracle’, which as it turns out, is one of the first pieces of music we hear in Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers, which, in tern, focuses on never ending journeys. I’m not for a moment suggesting Joey and John are about to go Mickey and Mallory, but the desperate and emotional nature exhibited in Stone’s creations is played upon heavily in this record.

Just like the listener, various musicians hitch-hike their way into Calexico’s vehicle and guest here. Sam Beam makes an appearance on ‘House Of Valparaiso’, then presumably, is dropped off and left to continue his own journey with Iron & Wine. Perhaps the most prominent “hitch-hiker” is Amparo Sanchez whose track on the record, ‘Inspiración’, completely rejuvenates the album’s landscape and turns it from a desperate desert into swinging Spain. Sanchez soon bids Calexico farewell though, treading back onto the quiet roads, and the horizon shifts once again, with ‘Slowness’ marking Calexico’s return to the miles of highway.

And to finish, we reache a revelation: ‘Carried to Dust’ is all about the ride, never the destination, and as soon as ‘Contention City’ ends, we are presumably booted out of the car (for now), bags in our hands and the sun in our eyes as we watch Calexico continue towards the horizon. Sure, we might feel cheated for a moment, but the memories of our time on the trek are enough to keep us warm and, thankfully, there is always another record and another chance for us hitch-hike with Joey and John. So for now, we place our thumbs out and hope for the best in the warm desert sun…

8/10 in stores Sept 8