From dusty border country to the outlaw lands of East London is quite a journey. The desert rock visions of Tuscon, Arizona's Calexico seem tremendously out of place tonight in the Ocean, London's newest and (currently) shiniest venue. They conjure up images of peeling paint and tense bar-rooms, hot reveries in the middle of nowhere rather than the middle of Hackney.
It's to Calexico's credit, however, that their songs are so cinematic, so evocatively detailed, that the weird incongruity of it all is soon forgotten. Pivoted around singer/guitarist Joey Burns and drummer John Convertino, they've been artfully selling myths of the old west colliding with modern life near the Mexican border for three albums now. Burns doesn't appear the most emotionally engaged singer but, as storyteller, he has a wonderful way with a cliche: his songs are full of lost highways and sonic winds and fingers pulling the trigger, pitched somewhere between a Sergio Leone film and a Mark Poirier novel.
Sometimes, you can't help wondering if they're hamming up the tale a little too much, playing up the lonesome storytelling to produce a fantasy Tuscon for cultural tourists, one that the city's residents would never recognise. Nevertheless, it's all incredibly seductive. There are whistling solos straight out of an Ennio Morricone score, and great guitar twangs that recall the master of surf music who relocated to the desert, Dick Dale. 'The Ballad Of Cable Hogue' is a perfect pastiche of a Lee Hazelwood & Nancy Sinatra ballad, with support act Neko Case guesting on vocals. And the likes of 'Service And Repair', shot through with rippling pedal steel courtesy of Lambchop's Paul Niehaus, has a swagger most of the alt.country scene's cloggers would die for.
Then there's the wonderful mariachi flourishes like 'El Picador', where two of the impressive six-piece band pick up their trumpets and slip over the border. That's the point when you stop worrying about notions of sincerity and cultural appropriation, and really fall for Calexico. Best of all is the expansive sweep of current single 'The Crystal Frontier', trumpets flying to the fore. Near the end, the double bassist drops the pace, Burns starts singing, brilliantly, The Specials' 'Ghost Town' and suddenly, the song isn't about Thatcherite-era Coventry any more, but about a real ghost town, somewhere out in Arizona. The sort of place Calexico summon up so effortlessly, in fact. Spooky.
