Posted on the "What are you listening to right now?" thread, decided to make it a thread of its own, why not. We dont have one on Calexico yet, and I got questions, too - so ...
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Quote:What are you listening to right now?
Calexico.
The idea was to get more music like
Crystal Frontier, which I love - it's such a vibrant, pulsating, warm, soulful, desert kind of saloon song. So I d/l'd a shitload of Calexico, basically the first half of their
Feast of Wire cd, which I'd read was their best one, and then some stuff, for example from their odds and ends record
Even My Sure Things Fall Through.
But it turns out their songs are mostly much, much sparser, more lonesome and quiet than that; to the point of heartbreaking in their desolated melancholy. CF is melancholy too, but in a open fire kinda way, not in an all alone underneath the intimidating dark night sky kinda sense.
So, I'm half-regretting it, cause some of this stuff is really getting to me - take
Woven Birds, for example - when I was just getting ready to feel at ease in my skin, mostly chilling down with some dubby reggea. But beautiful it is, though, on the other hand - gotta admit it. Beautiful music. Even an instrumentel snippet like
Pepito oozes - the heart of the wind, or something. And
Sunken Waltz, Sunken Waltz is an absolute gem.
Anyone got a recommendation on more Calexico songs like
Crystal Frontier and
Sunken Waltz?
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In
Blacktop, after a bit of haunting instrumental, the voice of Lawrence Clark Powell phases in - a historian of the Southwest, I gather, an audibly old man, croaking voice. Havent been able to find the text back on the net - but I think it deserves posting here, perhaps in tribute to man like Dys - this is what I got so far:
Quote:... in our time the Southwest is suffering rapid change
[??] high and the four [far?] corners grow dingy
The Grand Canyon is overrun by motorized rafters and transistor [rides?]
Our lust for energy dams the rivers
Missile sites, bomber ranges, nuclear testing and [?] desert warfare
All disturbed [?]'s classic's Southwest
When burning dust to nourish the urbanites, their reaction is to -
blacktop the desert ...
(Can anyone fill me in here?)
Also - unrelated thought - I know the one guy in Calexico is the same from Giant Sand (the track or two I heard from GS, I liked) - but are they somehow connected to Thin White Rope as well? I got an album here of TWR that I much like, and somehow the sound kinda really reminds me of it ...