Calexico

Years ago, Atari came out with a first person shooter by the title of Dead Man's Hand. Being a fan of westerns (and games where I get to shoot things) the box art caught my eye on a supply run for printer paper. I walked out of the store a few minutes later having snagged it from the bargain bin for the princely sum of $12.95 American.

Dead Man's Hand is a fine game in my estimate. Not terribly difficult for the novice player, the controls are simple and straightforward, and it features a rather ingenious scoring system that essentially adds limitless replay value to what would otherwise be a middling gaming experience. Perhaps I'll get around to writing a formal review at a later date.

At any rate, I had unknowingly picked up two gems. One was the game itself. The second was the musical scoring which, as I came to learn, was provided largely by an unfamiliar entity listed in the closing credits only as 'Calexico'. Unfamiliar with what a Calexico was or what it might do, I took to the internet.

The first page of my search led me to youtube. With the dawning realization that I was looking at an actual band I clicked on the first link which was, I believe, The Ballad of Cable Hogue. I must have watched the video half a dozen times before I recalled that there were others available. I watched everything youtube brought me and thereafter I counted myself a fan.

My first CD was Carried to Dust - at the time, their latest. I popped the disk in the CD player and listened to it onthe way home. Having heard maybe one or two songs from the album I didn't know whether I'd wasted my money or not. I recall listening to the full CD once and the impression that it wasn't as good as some of their other stuff, but it wasn't bad. But a funny thing happened - I listened again the next day and heard things I had missed, and while the disc doesn't have the atmosphere of some of their offerings it turned out to be pretty good overall. I suppose it gets under your skin.

I purchased a second, The Black Light, in preparation for an upcoming long range vacation. I was going west and I recognized a fair number of songs from the back of the case. As it happens the Black Light probably the favorite of the four I own. Not only does it have a marvelous western vibe running through the background, it makes for exceptional cruising music - something I can safely say about most of their catalog. The music and lyrics have a particular bite when you get far enough out from modern civilization or far enough into the remnants of the old. If you (like me) consider yourself sorely out of place in this century you'd do well to lay hands on a copy.

The last two I bought together. Spoke, the band's chronologically earliest offering, and Feast of Wire, which like a few of their other albums seems mildly schizophrenic the first few times around, yet settles into a kind of rhythm later on. As with all their music there lies a sense of movement. Not necessarily progress, but the feeling that the world is grinding slowly on to a future strange and remote while curiously familiar to that we've left behind.

So what is Calexico?

Calexico is rust and sand and horse sweat. It's saddle leather and hot blood and the baking desert sun. Woven through the lyrics you get crime, folly, tragedy, and the retelling of stories that have been told since man could speak and will live on as long as there are men left to tell. It is ageless and timeless yet pristine and new in its antiquity. If you've read anything of Cormac McCarthy's that has even the remotest connection to the west....you put that to music and you're in the ballpark for Calexico.

Definitely worth a look by my estimate.