Album Review: Calexico - Algiers

Calexico's second and third albums – The Black Light and Hot Rail – have a special and permanent place in my record collection. Essential travel music, they paint their sinister stories on a canvas straight from the Tex-Mex Breaking Bad-lands, with banditos around every bend. New album Algiers takes a fork in the road and heads East to The Big Easy. Recorded primarily on the outskirts of New Orleans, the record has most of the hallmarks of a Calexico production, with a marked decrease in the creepy character that keeps them filed under C in my portable music device.

That's not to say Algiers is all blue skies and butterflies. Sinner In The Sea takes us across the Gulf Of Mexico to Havana, where the Salsa and Son rhythms are reined in by Joey Burns' gravelly metaphors, and “the waves crashing on the Malecon wall” spar with the splash of brush on snare. No Te Vayas is maudlin in all the right places, the plaintive Spanish employed to beautiful effect against the wail of trumpets, and the title track could slip into any of the band's previous albums, such is its embodiment of the Calexico sound.

There is still that great mix of wistful storytelling and lonesome instrumentals, but ultimately Algiers is a bit like the dirty guy who got clean; commendable in its progression, and still boasting some great stories, but the minor key menace has softer edges – the danger is less pronounced. These nuances make for an interesting album, but one which is less eerie, less unsettling and consequently a little less compelling than previous efforts.