Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
Calexico
Calexico leaders Joey Burns and John Convertino have been playing in their signature mariachi-indie-rock-experimental-spaghetti-western-film-noir-soundtrack style since the early ’90s, when they were part of the all-instrumental combo Friends of Dean Martinez. But that doesn’t mean they haven’t changed over the years. Once they took the name Calexico in the middle of that decade, they began slowly working more vocal-oriented songs into their act. And as their popularity grew, so did the number of relatively straightforward pop songs they played. It’s hard to say which came first, the pop or the popularity, but it seems that both reached their apex in 2005 and 2006 when Calexico recorded In the Reins with Iron & Wine and Garden Ruin on their own. The albums had their moments, but both seemed a bit anonymous. They were the only albums in the Calexico catalog that did not feature the distinctive cover art of Victor Gastelum, and the music, too, lacked the qualities that made the rest of Calexico’s work so identifiable.
With last year’s Carried to Dust, Gastelum was back, as were many of the players from 2003’s Feast of Wire. Carried to Dust is more song-oriented than Calexico’s earliest work, but the instrumental passages and dramatic arrangements suggest that Burns and Convertino have finally come to terms with the fact that their experimental side is their stronger suit, and they can leave the singer-songwriter stuff to the Iron & Wines of this world. For a while, Calexico’s more conventional songs seemed at odds with their unconventional style. Here, when a song emerges from the atmosphere-heavy sound, it seems to come naturally.
CALEXICO: Street Scene, Friday, August 28. $65; two-day pass, $122.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Calexico
Calexico
Calexico leaders Joey Burns and John Convertino have been playing in their signature mariachi-indie-rock-experimental-spaghetti-western-film-noir-soundtrack style since the early ’90s, when they were part of the all-instrumental combo Friends of Dean Martinez. But that doesn’t mean they haven’t changed over the years. Once they took the name Calexico in the middle of that decade, they began slowly working more vocal-oriented songs into their act. And as their popularity grew, so did the number of relatively straightforward pop songs they played. It’s hard to say which came first, the pop or the popularity, but it seems that both reached their apex in 2005 and 2006 when Calexico recorded In the Reins with Iron & Wine and Garden Ruin on their own. The albums had their moments, but both seemed a bit anonymous. They were the only albums in the Calexico catalog that did not feature the distinctive cover art of Victor Gastelum, and the music, too, lacked the qualities that made the rest of Calexico’s work so identifiable.
With last year’s Carried to Dust, Gastelum was back, as were many of the players from 2003’s Feast of Wire. Carried to Dust is more song-oriented than Calexico’s earliest work, but the instrumental passages and dramatic arrangements suggest that Burns and Convertino have finally come to terms with the fact that their experimental side is their stronger suit, and they can leave the singer-songwriter stuff to the Iron & Wines of this world. For a while, Calexico’s more conventional songs seemed at odds with their unconventional style. Here, when a song emerges from the atmosphere-heavy sound, it seems to come naturally.
CALEXICO: Street Scene, Friday, August 28. $65; two-day pass, $122.
Comments