“Cruel”
from the album Garden Ruin
2006
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While traditional country music contains traces of the “western” sound, a lot of alt-country shares an affinity with the southwestern. Veteran Arizona indie-rock act Calexico is a quintessential case in point, with its cinematic songs anchored in waltzes and marches — time signatures that leave open spaces for the band to fill with hanging sound. After a decade of quasi-experimental, largely instrumental albums, Calexico’s latest record, Garden Ruin, finds co-leaders Joey Burns and John Convertino focusing on multi-part rock songs like the album-opener “Cruel,“ on which rising horns give way to mournful pedal steel, pizzicato strings, and distant background vocals. “Cruel” sounds like a mini-symphony, as do the fragile, faintly psychedelic “Panic Open String” and the post-Beatles singer-songwriter ballad “Lucky Dime.” The band even takes a break from making Americana sound exotic to venture overseas for “Nom De Plume,” which puts banjo and accordion behind whispered French. Apparently even Europe has lonely rooms with sympathetic acoustics.