Calexico — desert noir from Arizona
Pohoda will feature also one of the most striking bands of the Americana style (combining genre from Latino, country, and jazz to hard rock): Arizona-based band Calexico. Their songs have appeared in many films and series and they have had some excellent collaborations: for example, they recorded two songs for a Bob Dylan film with Iron & Wine and Jim James, singer of My Morning Jacket. The darlings of reviewers will release their ninth album at the end of January, and they will present it also in Trenčín in early July.
13. December 2017
Calexico has been described by some as “desert noir”. Besides to cheerful musical motifs, this rock analogue of spaghetti westerns also shows the distorted side of life on the American-Mexican border: tragic deaths on a tightly guarded border and drug cartels fights. Their first major achievement was the second album released in 1998 The Black Light with the critic from the Wall Street Journal rating it as one of the best records of the year. Album Feast of Wire received the highest possible rating from MOJO and was described as captivating, the most ambitious, and perfect. The song “Güero Canelo” of this album also appeared on the soundtrack to the film Collateral. The following EP In the Reins, which they recorded with Iron & Wine, was among the best-selling albums in the USA (Billboard 200 album charts). In 2007, Arcade Fire invited them to record the cover of their song “Ocean of Noise”. The next album, Carried to Dust, was rated 8.3 out of 10 by Pitchfork. Because of their eclectic approach to genres, the journalist Joe Tangari likened Calexico to music students whose every record is another lesson on the way to a dissertation.
In 2012, they released album Algiers, named after a New Orleans quarter destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, where they also recorded it. The consistently high quality of music and enhanced quality of records are the things in common to many reviews (Q Magazine, PopMatters, Drowned in Sound) also when it comes to the latest albums. Their latest Edge of the Sun received excellent reviews and it featured Ben Bridwell of Band of Horses. Uncut described it as another example of the musical breadth and grandeur of this remarkable band. They are currently working on a new album, The Thread That Keeps Us; the first appetiser of the album, “Voices in the Field”, was published on their Facebook page at the end of November. Joey Burns, leader of the band, claims that “touring” does not bother him, on the contrary, he loves travelling and learning about the new places where they perform. He said for the Guardian that he sends postcards home to family all the time approaching the postcards as a writer. We have no idea what he will write about the upcoming European tour, but it is quite likely that he will send the first postcard with a Slovak postage stamp at the beginning of July.