Demob Happy

Enter planet dust
8.5/10
‘Carried to Dust‘ is Calexico’s most mature work to date, arguably the best synthesis of their frontier atmospherics and Latin-inflected country songwriting. The follow-up to 2005’s much-dismissed ‘Garden Ruin’, ‘Carried to Dust’ makes the ‘South-Western noir’ tag stick better than any other Calexico album. It’s a record of great dusky beauty, varied and [...]

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Spaghetti westerns and pulp fiction
6/10
Calexico’s second album is a sprawling, doom-laden and cinematic work that draws heavily on latin jazz, mariachi, country and gypsy folk. Typically rich in the kind of malevolent desert imagery and border country narratives that suggest the novels of Cormac McCarthy, ‘Black Light‘ explores territory that is more fully realised in [...]

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