Label: Quarterstick (North America) City Slang (Europe) Format: CD,LP
Calexico are not trying to be subtle in any way with Hot Rail. From the Mexican Mafia gang tatoo font to their immediate delve into Mariachi horns on track one, it is apparent that this is border town type music for lovers of the desert from a group named after one very such crossing point. Mercifully they shy pretty far from sounding too Country, too Tex-Mex, and instead weave and swing through more classical SouthWestern themes of lone flowers and desolate vistas. Very cinematic, Hot Rail does conjure up beautiful melacholy pictures of lonely windswept horizons with rolling tumbleweeds, though due to some gratifying versatility, the views could be as easily taken for Italy as Arizona. One track, “Fade”, gives vision of a wanderlusted cabellero exploring the alien backstreets of Detroit and picking up some very smooth Jazz- just to freshen up the horses a bit.
Joey Burns throws voices out that range from sounding like Violent Femmes to being a dead on impression of Slint. One must love vocals in with all this music and it is the voices that keep this from being just another ambience-filled lovely brain soundtrack. And there is sooo much music in here. Ten musicians play about twenty instruments as well as sourced sounds and recordings. Even without the vocals, Hot Rail contains such full sonic richness that nods must go out to Convertino and Burns for their production skills and to Nick Luca and Craig Schumacher for their recording efforts as well as their contributions to the sounds they not only capture but helped to create. Madeleine Sosin plays an amazing violin throughout almost half the tracks which changes the music utterly and is so recognisable where it exists, and missed where it does not.
Recent sell-out shows are evidence of the sweep of appeal Calexico have found. Indeed the rails are hot and recommendations high. Loads of musicians are being compelled to combine the swank variables of classic American sounds but few can claim the success in vision achieved on here.
-Lilly Novak-
