A vintage synth belches out an insistent theme to open the noisy "Cumbia de Donde", a standout on Calexico’s new album. It’s one of the most striking moments on Edge of the Sun, a rusty tangle of staccato notes and syncopation atop a sinewy percussion groove. Not only does it chafe against the band’s default folk rock, but that central riff acts as a sort of code, as though the Tucson collective is offering coordinates for a northerly route connecting South and North, Sonora with San Francisco.
It’s a song about origins ("¿De dónde eres?") and destinations ("¿Adónde vas?"), punctuated by the dots and dashes of a conspiratorial horn section. "I’m not from here, I’m not from there," Joey Burns sings, imbuing this itinerancy with power and possibility. Taking over vocals at the bridge, the Spanish vocalist Amparo Sánchez reveals the song’s true destination. ¿Adónde vas? "A bailer cumbia." In this as in so many of Calexico’s songs, the characters can go anywhere and do anything. Perhaps it’s a quaint notion, but there is a certain freedom in rootlessness and restlessness.
This idea has been Calexico’s guiding principle since Burns and drummer Jon Convertino split from Giant Sand in the early 1990s and lit out for parts unknown. They have never stood still for long, working as a backing band for Neko Case and Amos Lee while expanding their drums-and-guitar soundtrack rock into something larger, more song-driven, and more cinematic. If the band have skirted accusations of cultural appropriation, that’s mainly due to the important fact that they do not deploy world music as a means to exoticize American folk rock. Rather, these various strains form the framework of their band’s songs, all the way down to the lyrics themselves. It wasn’t until 2012’s Algiers that they began to sound creatively staid, as though they had reached the ends of their inspiration in Latin American music, but Edge of the Sun sounds newly invigorated and inspired as Calexico reconsider their own past and find new music to explore.
Burns and Convertino have always surrounded themselves with an eclectic set of collaborators, and Edge of the Sun is filled with cameos, most of them lending their songs a distinctive sound. Case sounds like a mirage on "Tapping on the Line", and Ben Bridwell, on loan from Band of Horses, adds some 2000s indie-rock drama to opener "Falling from the Sky", making that central question resonate powerfully throughout the rest of the album: "Where do you go when you have nowhere to go?" With Sam Beam singing and playing guitar, "Bullets & Rocks" inevitably recalls their joint EP from 2005, In the Reins, only bolder and more resourceful as they set a Tinariwen guitar lick rolling through the Mojave.
As usual, however, the most compelling contributions come from artists less familiar to American ears. For this reason, Calexico place them prominently in the music, often building whole songs around their voices or instruments. Sánchez is as much a presence on "Cumbia de Donde" as frontman Burns is, and members of the Greek band Tikam lend "World Undone" its suspense, creating the impression of an unraveling groove. Mexican singer Carla Morrison dominates the dark reggae bump of "Moon Never Rises", ghosting Burns’ vocals before distorting her own delivery to make that central theme sound unsettling, uprooted, unplaceable. (Curious listeners should check out her excellent 2012 album, Déjenme Llorar.)
It’s tempting to praise Calexico simply for its globetrotting spirit, but corralling so many styles and sounds onto one album should not be an end in itself. Fortunately, the album’s musical diversity is a reflection of its lyrical themes. Named for a city that straddles Mexico and America, Calexico make music that is almost inevitably about borders both musical and national: finding them, crossing them, blurring them. Burns’ songwriting keeps that idea anchored in very personal and specific perspectives, which lends human proportions to the ambitiously cinematic arrangements. His characters are transient by circumstance, always striving for something better: a sense of security, a feeling of freedom, a place to dance without danger, sometimes just a dip in the ocean.
That’s the one wish of the main character in "Miles from the Sea", a landlocked laborer beaten down by "years of searing heat." He "dreams about swimming, miles away from the sea," Burns sings, his voice reaching deep to hit the low notes. The horns billow gently, the violin eddies wistfully, and Guatemalan singer Gaby Moreno draws those syllables out on the chorus to reinforce the sense of longing. The song fades in a roll of thunder, hinting that this dream of escape will go unrealized, but the music takes him and us right out among the waves.
