Monday's mp3: Eating Calexico's Dust

CD REVIEW

Calexico: Carried to Dust
(Quarterstick)

An eager publicist insisted that I have a listen to Calexico’s latest offering. The group has been on the periphery of my musical knowledge in recent years, though I admit to never developing a hunger for their sound. Apparently this album is a shift more toward the global music I’m inclined to write about.

Or is it?

From the git-go you’ll notice the Spanish portion of the opening track “Victor Jara’s Hands” backed by some mariachi-esque horns. Not exactly “world music,” but approaching Los Lobos territory. Then a couple brooding tunes and an odd 40-second guitar-snare interlude. A few more songs zip past in the blur of telephone poles half-seen between road and desert through the headlights’ sideways-leaking light -- intriguing, but dark and out of focus. Then... what’s this? “Inspiracion” sounds like something tasty out of the Ry Cooder-on-the-border songbook and features vocals by Amparanoia’s Amparo Sanchez.

[mp3] Calexico feat. Amparo Sanchez: Inspiracion
from the album Carried to Dust

Now we’re talking! Then, more telephone poles. Another town, called “El Gatillo (Trigger Revisited)," this one with nobody around to sing but boasting a compelling cowboy-whistle refrain worthy of a decent spaghetti Western. Then a few more telephone poles before the car runs out of gas and comes to a creaking stop in “Contention City.”

I’ll give this another listen without my “world music” hat on, but for those seeking a global landscape, be advised that Carried to Dust’s charms are widely dispersed amid broad swaths of melancholic desert.

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Accordion

CD REVIEW
Tara Linda & Luna Nueva - New Moon
self-released

You have to be intrigued by a musician who cites as influences PJ Harvey, Danny Elfman, Lydia Mendoza, The Pixies, and Edith Piaf. Who evolved from punk drumming to singing torch songs and rancheras. And who performs with a group called The Blue Fur Monkeys in addition to the Tex-Mex group Luna Nueva heard on this album.

The adventurous tracklist of New Moon begins with an spoken word story evocative of the film El Mariachi (if you substitute an accordion case for the guitar case), and proceeds through the sounds of the border, from boleros and cumbias to an accordion-led version of Johnny Cash's classic "Fulsom Prison Blues." The latter is among several songs that feel a little too loose, the productions feeling a little too rushed or perhaps too casual for the album's otherwise promising straddling-the-Rio-Grande feel. A little unevenness doesn't shake the appeal of other songs, such as the sparse mystery of "El Diablito y Su Accordeon," or the traditional cancion "Las Gaviotas."

[mp3] Tara Linda & Luna Nueva: El Diablito y Su Accordeon
from the album New Moon

More Tara Linda & Luna Nueva:
website
myspace