Having excelled as purveyors of some of the most inspiring Tex-Mex-flavoured Americana ever committed to disc over the past decade or so, the last thing you’d probably expect Tucson’s CALEXICO to do is make a ‘rock’ album, but with their seventh, the enigmatically-titled “Garden Ruin”, that’s in effect what they’ve gone ahead and done.
OK, everything’s relative and “Garden Ruin” is hardly The Arctic Monkeys either. I mean, it’s still entirely recognisable and finds Joey Burns and John Convertino still very much in the driving seat with their unpredictable muse. It’s not entirely devoid of their usual fascinating exploration either, as both the sultry Latino-Cuban lope of the heady “Roka (Danza De La Muerte)” and the potent Gallic-noir of “Nom De Plume” ably demonstrate, but what you can’t deny is that “Garden Ruin” is surely Calexico’s most straight-ahead collection of rock/pop-related tunes to date.
Opener “Cruel” gives you some idea what to expect. It proffers a very live, organic sound and you can feel John Convertino slamming away in the room with you. Joey Burns has clearly gained in confidence as a vocalist, too, and several of those patented Calexico staples (wafts of lap steel float by like tumbleweed, stabs of discreet Mariachi brass shimmer in the heat) make their presence felt as the song unfolds, yet for all that it’s much closer in design to linear rock/ pop than ever before.
Significant chunks of what follows can also be deemed either ‘poppy’ or ‘rocky’ without abject disgrace. “Bisbee Blue”, for example, has the kind of jaunty, but intelligent feel you’d associate with a band like The Go-Betweens and has a lovely insertion of strings during the Middle Eight; “Lucky Dime” is equally upbeat and soulful and its’ descriptive brass (Alto sax, I think?) helps it swing along like a lovely summer breeze, while songs like “Letter To Bowie Knife” and “Deep Down” rock loud and hard in their own right. The former is Glam-my and zips along on a chorus of “It’s too late!” while “Deep Down” lurches forward like the logical punky extension of “Feast Of Wire”s “Just Like Stevie Nicks.”
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Also strangely absent are Calexico’s trademark instrumental wanderings, though some welcome introspective respite comes via the worn, pretty and romantic “Yours And Mine” (featuring a lovely throaty and emotional vocal from Burns) and the dreamy swoons of steel and whispered invocations of “Smash” where Burns mutters “take out my tools, maybe smash it/ destroy the past.” It’s a note to self he seems to take as a command during the molten rock out of the closing “All Systems Red”, which is by some way the most expansive and epic Calexico have ever sounded.
Like I said earlier, everything’s relative and just because “Garden Ruin” has a tendency to rock out, it’s still a good few thousand miles from a U2-style stadium re-invention or anything equally dire, so there’s no need to break out in a cold sweat. However, while “Garden Ruin” is a very good, sometimes excellent record, it’s also true that in terms of that indefinable and hot-blooded desert magic it’s a little dry, if not exactly threatened by a drought just yet.
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