Win Tickets to See Calexico at the Fonda on the 29th!
Ok, Calexico is up there on my desert island CD list. I’ve loved this band since 2001’s “Even My Sure Things Fall Through”–and I feel like a jerk for not having discovered them in 1997, when their first full-length came out. Blending central & south American sounds with the mestizo music of the US-Mexico border and the space-rock “New Western” sound–think Ennio Morricone filtered through a fuzzed-out Mexican radio. Their live shows are engrossing, with a balls-out brass section, guest vocalists en espanol, and music that expands to suffuse the whole space with an otherworldly feel you only get when you’re in the desert, in the middle of nowhere.
So I’m insanely thrilled about this upcoming show and you can bet I’ll be there with bells on.
If you’d like to go too, tell me what your favorite song by them is, and why you love it so. The most impassioned fan gets the single pair of tickets we have to give. Or you can suck it up & buy tickets here.
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ROKA. It’s like every drive across to Las Vegas at four in the morning with a pack of Camel wides, a cup of java from a truckstop, the windows down as you try to sing along with the spanish singer and have absolutely no idea what it is that they’re singing, but knowing exactly what they mean. I stick that song on nearly every mixtape I’ve ever made.
Scott (jscottamy@earthlink.net)
Sunken Waltz! When that little acoustic guitar riff plays in the middle of the song, then melts into the reverbed electric guitar bit that comes in, I’m already entranced by the onetwothree waltz beat. Pure auditory heaven!
Seriously, there is no better music to drive through the desert to than Calexico.
My favorite is "Pepita." My favorites from Calexico are usually the poppier songs with vocals, but there is something incredibly atmospheric about the layers that build through "Pepita." It’s all drama. I took a cross-country drive not long after Feast of Wire was released, and I will always remember hitting the southwest with "Pepita" playing at dusk. Romantic visuals of rock formations with a cool breeze and clear skies and nighttime driving with a purpose always pop in my mind. I feel like the song most cohesively showcases what Calexico does best: cinematic music that feels modern while recalling traditional music of the southwest. But "Pepita" seems unique in the way that it does so without the traditional instrumentation that usually belay their influences.