calexico, “sunken waltz” & “dub latina,” + treats,
from: feast of wire, 2003
Whatever it means to justify how their music ends up, Calexico is the best desert noire band working the joint. Not a bad record populating their 27 year career either. Drummer John Convertino and guitarist/vocalist Joey Burns are flat out, genre creating, denizens of a soulful ingenuity. Two exemplars from their 2003 mysterypiece Feast of Wire bear this out. Innumerable listens in and I’m convinced that “Sunken Waltz” is a waltz of mystic, crystal, phantom proportions, but simultaneously, not sure about what . Suffice it to say they are experts at populating their work with lyrical and instrumental one of a kinds.
“Washed my face in the rivers of empire
Made my bed from a cardboard crate
Down in the city of quartz
No news, no new regrets
Tossed a Susan B. over my shoulder
And prayed it would rain and rain
Submerge the whole western states
Call it a last fair deal
With an American seal
And corporate hand shake
Take the story of carpenter mike
Dropped his tools and his keys and left
And headed out as far as he could
Past the cities and gated neighborhoods
He slept ‘neath the stars
Wrote down what he dreamt
And he built a machine
For no one to see
Then took flight, first light
Of new morning
”
