CALEXICO @ Le National

By Simon Howell - A Listening Ear - 07/07/2008

Since the late 90's, Calexico -- formed by Joey Burns and John Convertino of Giant Sand -- have been steadily churning out their own blend of horn-infused folk-rock, which touches on traditional Mexican music as well as more typical American folk influences. Their live show, as it turns out, is a fairly straightforward replica of their recorded sound, albeit with a few left turns here and there.

One of them came at the show's very outset, with Burns and Convertino entering alone to play a quick little surf-rock instrumental. Afterwards, the other four members strolled onstage to main the guitars, horns and pedal steel as the set began in earnest. Feast of Wire, their breakthrough, still holds a considerable sway over their setlist, including spirited takes on "Quattro (World Drifts In)" and "Black Heart." The highlight of the Feast material, however, was definitely the radically transformed "Not Even Stevie Nicks" -- a modest acoustic ditty on record, here performed as a three-guitar monster of a track.

At least one track from the upcoming Carried to Dust was performed -- a tricksy little number called "Two Silver Trees," indicating a continuation of the more strongly song-based approach evidenced on their most recent release, Garden Ruin. The set also featured two prominent covers -- Love's "Alone Again Or" (which is featured on their Convict Pool EP), and Bob Dylan's "Going to Acapulco," which they had previously recorded with My Morning Jacket's Jim James for the I'm Not There soundtrack. For help on the latter, they brought openers Woodpigeon onstage to sing backup and play violin, upping the onstage personnel to twelve for that particular number.

Special mention must be made of Burns, who has to be one of the most polished live singers I've ever witnessed. While he was aided by Le National's fine acoustics and routinely excellent sound work, he was always pitch-perfect and confident on the mic (though his stage moves verged on the corny at many instances). The trumpet work, which was featured on nearly every track they played, was also phenomenal. Calexico's appeal is based more on their "indie-mariachi" sound than on individual songs so naturally some sections of the set ran together (something that could have been fixed with a little setlist manipulation). Regardless, their dogged professionalism and lush instrumentation make them a must-see act for any fans of folk-based music, even if they'll likely leave many hip types cold.

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