Hot Rail

Entertainment Weekly - "...Burrows deep into south-of-the-border territory, with authentic waltz-time instrumentals, then warbles murder ballads and emotional road-kill tales that sound like Will Oldham fronting a mariachi band." - Rating: A- Melody Maker - 4 stars out of 5 - "...a mix of down-home country charms and knowingly worldly sophistication....made for everyone who's ever come second in any of life's duels. Beautiful." Q - 4 stars out of 5 - "...Highly evocative....sounding like a collection of offcuts from Orson Welles' 'A Touch Of Evil'....Accordions, melodica, trumpets and vibes give the album a haunting ambience..." The Wire - "...Combines scorched soundtracks with moody ballads....adding more impressionistic interludes and vocal tracks..." CMJ - "...Unfurls dramatically, with more colors and a sharper eye for detail....backed by sumptuous horns, slide guitars and more, HOT RAIL sounds like a collaborative effort between the Buena Vista Social Club, a wild-eyed wunderkind producer and a Gram Parsons-influenced rock star..." Mojo - "...A beautiful, accomplished work....The lyrics are resigned and weary but the music is sensuous and evocative." Rolling Stone - 3 stars out of 5 - "...A lazy dissolving dream of a record that glimmers in and out like a mirage and sharpens to a hard focus with songs like 'Sonic Wind'....conjuring a phantom photograph of the American West, overgrown with cactus and the unemployed." Magnet - "You'll need all the quiet you can possibly summon to hear the layered nuances embedded in the grooves of HOT RAIL....It's eerie quiet makes it so memorable....Seek not to label but to listen."

Continuing the Tijuana Brass meets Giant Sand and Ennio Morricone in a dark neuvo-waveo spaghetti Western approach they've gradually refined over the past two albums, multi-instrumentalists John Convertino and Joey Burns keep exploring terrain they've uniquely staked out. While not as cinematic, sprawling, and impressive as 1998's The Black Light, the duo create vivid soundscapes as dry, hot, and shimmering as the weather of their Tucson, Arizona home. Although they subtly expand their palette in all sorts of interesting ways, the spooky, late-'70s Miles Davis feel they inject into the nearly eight-minute "Fade" through jazzy drums, spacy vibes, and ominous cello works best. The songs, especially the appropriately named atmospheric instrumentals "Untitled II" and "Untitled III" tend to meander, but the duo keeps peeling back more layers and different instruments to pull the listener's interest. "Sonic Wind" and "Ballad of Cable Hogue" are as succinct, melodic, and tight as they've ever been, and Joey Burns' yearning, whisper of a voice suits this evocative music perfectly. This could easily turn into schtick, though, and it's to the duo's credit that they not only take themselves seriously, but don't pummel their weirdness into the ground. Instead, they push and knead the already elastic boundaries of a genre they've practically created, in jazzy, bluesy, and experimental directions that indicate they have a rich future ahead of them. Hot Rail isn't a great album; it's far too spotty and inconsistent musically. But it's an important one because it proves Calexico isn't content to remain stuck in an intriguing but limiting rut and is willing to explore new sonic directions while maintaining a distinctive identity and vision. ~ Hal Horowitz|