Calexico - Garden Ruin

Genre rock Publisher Quarterstick Records External Links Official Calexico Website Official Quarterstick Record Website

Though Garden Ruin is their first studio album since 2003's Feast of Wire, there's no doubt that Calexico is a busy band. 2004 and 2005 brought two remarkable EPs: Convict Pool consisted of covers and other odds and ends, while In the Reins was a collaboration with Sam Beam (better known as Iron & Wine) that resulted in a successful tour. But in the short time since, the band found time to work with noted alt-country producer J.D. Foster, and together they've created a thematic and exciting work for their unique catalog.

The record's title hints at the biblical story of Eden, and the songs bear this out through their apocalyptic sentiments, which tell tales of both the small and the large falling apart: from relationships to cities to countries and the universe, everything is subject to processes of destruction. "Cruel" is a broken-hearted lament that sets the tone for the album. The characteristic Calexico horns float in as Joey Burns' rich baritone sings of a "Cruel heartless reign/chasing short term gains/right down to the warning signs." No, this ain't a happy album, but the band shows its range on "Bisbee Blue," which confidently strikes out on its own. A clear-sky tune, it uses a walk through the former Arizona mining town and current folkish-artsy enclave Bisbee to talk about the passage of time and the transformation of the Southwestern landscape. This kind of attention to local detail shows how Calexico keeps in touch with their Southwestern roots, making them heroes in their hometown of Tucson. In less-capable hands, these songs might border on smooth country, destined for El Paso department store elevators, but the talented members of Calexico know when to throw in dynamic changes, when to use backing vocals, when to get gritty: in short, how to spice up each song to resonate with the charged content of the lyrics.

Sometimes that resonance is best accomplished with a touch of irony, like on the hushed "Panic Open String": while Joey Burns sings with resignation about a world flush with natural disasters, he taps out a dulcet descending scale on a glockenspiel that conveys a sense of fatality, so you're smiling and nodding as the world comes to an end. "Letter to a Bowie Knife" turns quickly into a barnstormer, its lyrics evoking the alternately certain and confused musings of a street-living religious nut, calling the world to action even as the inevitable is acknowledged: "Come on, come on!/It's too late!/It's too late!"

On "Smash," Burns' hushed vocals sing of a relationship that needs to die a final, absolute death, represented by a Calexico trademark: the noise squall. But even this small mercy is ultimately denied in the end as the squall fades and the song fades with Burns singing "Every time this happen/it gets harder and harder to build back again." After "Deep Down" brings us back into political territory, asserting that political leaders do, despite much evidence to the contrary, have moral knowledge of their actions ("Duty carried out in the field/deep down you know it's evil/you've always known it's evil"), "Nom de Plume" takes a flight of fancy across the Atlantic: the lyrics are delivered in sinister whispers of French, which meshes surprisingly well with Calexico's sound (which itself has never been purely Southwestern, encompassing Mexican, jazz, and various European elements as well). "All Systems Red" strikes an appropriate final note for the album, expressing plainly the desire of ordinary citizens to flee a country they have trouble recognizing as their own: "Scatter like paper in the eye of the storm/documented with a silenced note/that's only heard from far away." The song delivers on the promise of angst: catharsis, which comes in a huge build to one of those trademark noise squalls, as Burns cries "I want to tear it all down and build it up again...I want to hear those chimes ring again!" But the chimes don't ring, and instead the song self-destructs in a blast of unsettling noise, an ending that hits startlingly, uncomfortably close to home.