Calexico

The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, “Simmer Down”

Ska-Core, The Devil & More is an EP with mostly covers released in 1993, notably primarily for this nice cover of a Marley tune. Other than this, it’s far from an essential release.

Uncle Tupelo, “Sandusky”

March 16-20, 1992 might be the Uncle Tupelo album that has aged the best. I’m not sure it’s my favorite, I don’t think it’ll ever displace No Depression. But the stripped down, acoustic production suits the material so well, and the traditional songs they picked to go with their originals all mesh so well. I truly wish we could have gotten a few more of these before things fell apart.

Mad Caddies, “Nobody Wins at the Laundromat”

When ska-punk just kind of turns into punk with horns, I start some losing interest. Sure, it can still be good, but there are a lot of great straight-up punk bands that they’re going to be competing with. I’m not that desperate for horns.

Calexico, “Cumbia de Donde”

OK I LIED GIVE ME ALL THE HORNS I NEED THEM RIGHT NOW

Edge of the Sun is one of the more, uh, sunny albums from Calexico’s later career. This bouncy tune is the most sunniest of the lot, but it’s by no means alone being charming. If you’re a big fan of Feast of Wire (which you should be), this is a pretty good one to go to next.

Medeski, Martin and Wood, “Hey-Hee-Hi-Ho”

If my search is to be trusted, there are about 102 blog posts on this site indicating that I don’t know shit about jazz. Sad that I’m so ignorant, given that I actually listen to a fair bit of it.

Calexico, “Black Heart”

My favorite Calexico record. If this song doesn’t grab you, I’m afraid to inform you that you’re hopeless.

Therapy?, “Nausea”

Therapy? was a band that kind of got tagged with an alternative metal label during the early 90s. It kind of makes sense - this isn’t as gritty as grunge, and it’s not robotic enough for industrial metal, but it also doesn’t really have any markers of any of the genres of metal going at the time. This is from Nurse, a record that got them signed to a major label. It’s a decent record, although I’ll confess I haven’t thought about this band in ages.

Calexico, “Fake Fur”

The Black Light is the album where Calexico became CALEXICO. The dusty desert aesthetic was in full flower on this album. The recording is soaked in reverb, there’s tons of space for the atmosphere, and it’s just a lovely experience. It’s not their best album, because they would marry this sound to better songwriting on later records, but this is still a fun album.

Elvis Costello, “Crawling to the USA”

This comes to us from the bonus second disc from the This Year’s Model reissue. The bonus material on a lot of these types of reissues can be pretty dodgy, but Costello’s songwriting in this period was so strong that even the leftovers are pretty darn good. I mean, this is an excellent tune!

Hot Hot Heat, “Le Le Low”

Victoria, BC’s Hot Hot Heat had a real moment in the 2000s, although I’ll confess, I don’t really remember how far they got penetrating the mainstream. I just remember that they were doing well there for a little while. That’s the kind of information you can’t get just anywhere! At any rate, this is from the beginning of their debut EP, so this is how they kicked it off. Not bad!

Firewater, “This Is My Life”

One of the highlights on the best Firewater album, Golden Hour. It’s an album that attempts to answer the question “what if we just made the whole album out of highlights”.

Calexico, “Yours and Mine”

Hot damn, shuffle bringing the fire today! Garden Ruin was the follow-up to my favorite Calexico record, Feast of Wire. With this album, Calexico nudged slightly further away from the mariachi sounds being quite as dominant as prior records, with a little more country and folk creeping in to replace it. There are also no instrumentals on the album, another break with the past. That’s not to say there aren’t any southwestern sounds on the album, just that there is a little less influence. This song is a fine example, this is pretty much just pure country. But lovely!

Fuckin’ Christmas! YEAH! Gonna find some Christmas tunes for us today! Just going to pick some recent Christmas albums and take a random track from them. Ooh, bonus: PUP playing a Christmas adaptation of “Kids” with some puppets dancing around!

Calexico, “Seasonal Shift”

The title track from Calexico’s just released Christmas album, Calexico is a natural for making a lovely Christmas album. Everything this band does is beautiful, so it’s going to fit totally in with the season. I heartily endorse this record!

Dām-Funk, “Floating On Air”

One-man band Dām-Funk does a nice job of collaborating with a wide range of interesting folks, often to fine results. This cut is the first peak on Floating on Air, featuring Flea and somebody called Computer Jay. It wanders around a little bit, but I’m totally fine with that in my electro-funk.

Calexico, “Victor Jara’s Hands”

2008’s Carried To Dust was a return back to the sounds of their best album, Feast of Wire. (As an aside, it was super gratifying when the band themselves agreed with my opinion, proving that Five Songs is never wrong.) It’s actually super admirable that Calexico will try out different styles on their records, but I’m also not sorry to get a second helping of that super lush, dusty beauty either. As always, Calexico kind of sounds like they’re making a soundtrack to a movie that doesn’t exist.

Three days, when will it stop? NOT TODAY! HIT IT, YOUTUBE!

The Microphones, “I Want To Be Cold”

There’s something almost shoegaze-y about this track from the Microphones, with the buried vocals and washes of noise. I love it when everything lays out about a minute in as well. It’s a short tune, but it packs a punch.

Kid Koala, “3 Bit Blues”

Kid Koala assembled the entirety of 12 Bit Blues out of layers and layers of samples of old blues, adding scratching over the top when everything was put together. It’s a fascinating experiment, as with just about everything he does, sounding ancient and dusty while simultaneously modern.

I was at Shut Up & Sit Down Expo over the weekend, and it was fun, although I think that that was mostly because it was a getaway weekend for Megan and I. But, it was a good pretext to get out of town! Also, somebody asked me for my autograph. Super cool!

Today’s tunes.

Ministry, “I Prefer”

We’ve now gone back in Ministry’s catalog far enough to reach their first good album. The flaccid synth-pop of With Sympathy and stilted semi-aggro synths of Twitch had finally metastasized into the aggressive Land of Rape and Honey. This, arguably, is the most industrial of their albums, with less of the metallic riffing of their later stuff but all of the mechanical pounding you might want. I haven’t listend to this in ages, I should give it a spin.