Geography has always played a big role in Calexico's music, even back when they were apprenticing with Howe Gelb in Giant Sand. Since going duo in the 1990s, Joey Burns and John Convertino have evoked the Southwest United States in heady, careful detail-- not only in sad stories about border crossers, doomed drivers, and restless wanderers, but in slyly adventurous music that combines Latin American traditions with North American rock'n'roll sounds. Impossibly, they showed such a keen facility with those styles and such a commitment to that sound-- and, by virtue, to that place-- that these two gringos never came off as exploiters or tourists. So it makes sense that Calexico would be involved in immigration reform efforts: For one thing, how could you live with yourself in Arizona and not be involved? For another, their music has proved that the borders between styles can be as blurrable, as mutable, as porous as those separating countries and cultures.
Burns and Convertino have recorded nearly every Calexico release at their WaveLab Studio in Tucson, which has proved popular with acts like Amos Lee and Neko Case as well. They've been so associated with those concentric locales-- the studio within the city within the state within the region within the country-- that it seems especially significant that they chose to record their latest album, Algiers, elsewhere. The duo, along with producer Craig Schumacher, trekked east across New Mexico and Texas and set up shop in perhaps the most storied and tragic city in the United States: New Orleans. The album is named for a neighborhood on the southwest banks of the Mississippi River, home to krewe dens, Catholic churches, jazz clubs, and more than a few Katrina-flooded homes.
It doesn't sound like they left Tucson at all, which is slightly disappointing but which might actually be their deftest trick: Algiers carries very little of the city's baggage. No one is going to argue for this as a post-Katrina album (or even a post-Isaac album). There are watery allusions peppering these songs, as when Burns exhorts, "Take it all the way down/ below the water line," on first single "Para", but that has more to do with burying the past than reviving it. There's something refreshing about this approach, as it opens up the city to new ideas and new moods and new meanings, placing that horror into a larger historical continuum.
On the other hand, if place defines Algiers as much as that album title signals, it must have done so in the creative process, as these songs never sound too far removed from Tucson or from the raft of Calexico's catalog. On one hand, there are no Mardi Gras trinkets on this album, no street bands or zydeco flourishes, no Quintron or Trombone Shorty or Dr. John, no hoodoo charms or Saints gear. Burns and Convertino went east to make another western record, one that even indulges Spanish-language lyrics and songs about sacrifices to Quetzalcoatl ("Puerto" may be the most overcooked thing Burns and Convertino have set to tape). Algiers sounds great, with a noticeable sensitivity to instrumental interplay and an emphasis on Burns' conspiratorial vocals, but the album is haunted by the missed opportunities to absorb the particulars of this neighborhood and reflect that in the music.
What we're left with, after a few spins have dispersed expectations, is another solid Calexico record, impeccably conceived and imaginatively crafted. Such consistency may gnaw at any excitement over a new installment from the band, which means Algiers never sounds quite as momentous or as immediate as 2003's Feast of Wire or even 2008's Carried to Dust. But that may only be a way of saying that the record demands more time and more spins before it burrows into your head. There are certainly enough moments to hook your interest: the dissonant cascade of strings that ends "Para" and hints so vividly at something horrible; those lovely ghost vocals on "Fortune Teller"; the sparkling tango theme on "Sinner in the Sea" that rises into a tense and fractious crescendo.
Opener "Epic" even manages to live up to its title, beginning with a single, steady, insistent acoustic strum that just hangs in the middle air, suggesting a kind of weightless motion-- as though Burns and Convertino were positioning the listener just out of the way of song's action. It's a sound and technique they've used on nearly every Calexico album, and as such it's become instantly recognizable as Calexico. While it may sound familiar, it's nevertheless effective, ushering you you into the world of this album. And ultimately, it is a different world from those evoked on previous albums, one thoroughly shaken by the tectonic cello rumble that undercuts the violent squalls of electric guitar. Perhaps this is the power of New Orleans working on a musically subatomic level, determining decisions made just out of earshot. The result is an album that never sounds settled or still, defined not by one or another place but by the tumultuous spaces in between.
