 by STEVE MCPHERSON
Running order can be funny thing, if you give any thought to that kind of thing when you consider music these days. A collection of songs is more than the sum of its parts when you do something with that collection’s structure, so how do you decide what song goes first? Do you introduce the unfamiliar listener, do you comfort or shock the longtime fan? If you’re Tucson band Calexico, and you’ve made a name for yourself playing a peculiar brand of Latin-tinged Americana music, you wait until the last track of your new album, Garden Ruin, to show your hand to the table. “All Systems Red” is an obvious closer of a song, but I’d recommend skipping ahead and starting with the end, then rewinding it, Tarantino-style, and checking out how you got there.
 “It
is a more direct record,” affirms singer/multi-instrumentalist Joey Burns
by phone from St. Louis during a tour stop. “It felt like it was time
to do something like that. Frustration was building in our own personal lives
and traveling to Europe and around the world and seeing the different perspectives
one would get going outside the main media channel here in the States.”
If you’re familiar with the last Calexico record, Feast of Wire,
you’re probably expecting a largely acoustic record built around dusty
waltzes and spare clave beats. To be sure, those things are present on Garden
Ruin, but “All Systems Red” is an entirely different monster
that finds Burns wearing his heart on his sleeve in a marked departure from
previous efforts, and one of the finest political songs you’re going to
hear before the midterm elections.
The song walks out on eggshells, treading along a delicately insistent and dolorous
acoustic guitar line that gives way to Burns’ weary vocals. “Felt
a tremor stir beneath my breath / They forecast storms on the Gallup poll /
Woke up from the nightmare news / Hoping to read a sign in the morning air,”
sings Burns as he spins out all his frustrations. There’s a palpable sense
of internal conflict that’s in stark contrast to the typical Calexico
narrator. His friends are sick to death of the way things are, ready to give
up, and the typical protagonist in a Calexico song would be more than ready
to cut and run as well. They’re mostly desperados, either detached enough
to roll past trouble or tough enough to make it through. On tracks like “Yours
& Mine” and opener “Cruel,” there’s a surefootedness
that seems capable of weathering the storm, but in “All Systems Red”
it seems like it all might be just too much to take.
It’s such a dramatic departure for the band not only because of their
own history, but their history as spare and sympathetic collaborators as well.
Just a few weeks ago they recorded the Dylan song “Senor” with Willie
Nelson for the upcoming Dylan biopic. Incidentally, this was just days before
Nelson’s recent drug bust for marijuana posession. “We were both
headed towards Louisiana,” says Burns. “The same morning we got
up to drive from Baton Rouge to New Orleans, we heard the news that he just
got busted. Probably a rookie cop who didn’t know better.” He and
drummer John Convertino also provided backing on modern-day torch singer Neko
Case’s last two efforts and their penchant for collaboration even led
to another dark horse track on Garden Ruin, “Nom de Plume,” which
Burns sings in French.
 “I
wrote it in English,” he explains, “and producer J.D. Foster had
some friends from Paris who we were working with on their own stuff (Niam Amour
and Marianne Dissard) and he kind of just threw it out there. I dropped him
off at the airport and he said, ‘Two things: Don’t listen to the
rough mixes for a while and think about singing that song in French.’
So I went over to Marianne and Niam’s house and sat around with a bottle
of wine one afternoon and just went through it. It was interesting to see where
you could take the translation; We could go further into details and descriptions
and moods and I really enjoyed doing that. I also think that [we’re] still
feeling the repercussions of this swing to the extreme right and feeling, like,
‘What happened to Old Europe?’ They’re not supporting Bush
and the current administration and their propaganda for fighting the war on
terrorism. Still, to this day. I went to a Mexican restaurant in Tucson and
I asked for sparkling water, like Perrier, and they said, ‘Sorry, we don’t
carry that anymore. We don’t carry anything from France.’ Singing
a song in French, it touches on several different themes.”
Which brings us back to the bloody heart of the album. If “Nom de Plume”
contains a sly sideways jab at the current administration by way of its language—a
tactic used again in “Letter to Bowie Knife,” which effectively
skewers the self-assured nature of the religious right by adopting their voice—then
“All Systems Red” is the war cry. There’s no wise and calculated
back and forth in the song structure here. No ebb and flow. It’s an inexorable
march toward the edge of the precipice. Convertino’s drums enter through
the back door as Burns sings, “Just when you think it couldn’t get
much worse / Watch the numbers rise on the death toll / And the chimes of freedom
flash and fade / Only heard from far, far away.” It’s here that
the pressure seems to break the song, visible (well, audible) cracks appearing
as the rhythm section ramps up and Burns laments, “I hear you can’t
trust in your own / Now the gray is broken in the early morn / And the words
forming barely have a voice / It’s just your heart that’s breaking
without choice.”
 Calexico
are a band that plays extensively outside the U.S. and they’ve had some
experience with the frustrations of others that mirror their own. It can be
tough when confronted with it, but, says Burns, “It’s important
to connect with it. I’ve had people come up to me and say, ‘What
the fuck is up with your country?’ And there’ve been times when
I’ve had to just listen. No giving an excuse or anything. It won’t
do anything; you just have to listen. And that goes into how John and I play
music. There’s a lot of listening, there’s a lot of care taken towards
the phrasing of the melody and I think that’s why we get asked to back
people up because we enjoy that whole process of listening.”
That’s part of it, without a doubt. There aren’t very many indie
rock bands that have a comparable level of musicianship and such a facility
for constructing songs on the barest skeletons. “We start off playing
as a rhythm section,” says Burns in explaining the band’s songwriting
process, “and slowly but surely bring different instruments into the mix.
You don’t need a lot of notes, just some color and texture can go a long
way—a little goes a long way and space is really important to music.”
Their deep respect for the craft of songwriting is what makes the conclusion
of “All Systems Red” so effective. Squalling guitars needle in alongside
strings that threaten to swallow the vocals whole, and as the song devolves
into chaos, it sounds as if Burns is being carried away by a monstrous undertow,
the last thing you hear from him a strangled cry of “I want to tear it
all down / and build it up again.” Listeners looking for more of the same
Latin-tinged country will probably be disappointed, but start with the last
track, and you can see how Calexico are subtly flipping the script on you: not
kinder, gentler, but more direct, more agitated.
Now you’re ready for the first track. ||
Calexico perform on Thu., Sept. 28 at the Fine Line with Oakley Hall. 7:30
p.m. $16. 18+. 318 First Ave. N., Mpls. 612-338-8100. For more info on Calexico,
visit their official website at casadecalexico.com
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