During the global COVID-19 pandemic, Calexico remained busy, issuing the 2020 holiday release Seasonal Shift and working on El Mirador, their tenth studio album. Though Joey Burns and John Convertino no longer resided at the band's former base of operations in Tuscon, Arizona, they returned there to record at keyboardist Sergio Mendoza's home studio, and the feeling of revisiting the heart of their music resounds through the album. Frequently, El Mirador feels like a summary of Calexico's core strengths: The slow cumbia of ...
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During the global COVID-19 pandemic, Calexico remained busy, issuing the 2020 holiday release Seasonal Shift and working on El Mirador, their tenth studio album. Though Joey Burns and John Convertino no longer resided at the band's former base of operations in Tuscon, Arizona, they returned there to record at keyboardist Sergio Mendoza's home studio, and the feeling of revisiting the heart of their music resounds through the album. Frequently, El Mirador feels like a summary of Calexico's core strengths: The slow cumbia of the title track begins the album with a spooky and playful search for "that buzzing in your corazon" that calls to mind the more fantastical style of the band's early days, a feeling cemented by the warm vocals of longtime friend and collaborator Gaby Moreno. "Turquoise," a noir-ish interlude with a fabulous trumpet solo, is a welcome reminder that an instrumental from a band with this much musical firepower could never be filler. They lend some of this drama to the smoldering finale "Caldera," which along with "Rancho Azul" delivers the kind of character sketch that Calexico does so well. It only makes sense that their homecoming would extend to praise for the people as well as the place that made them who they are, and they express that gratitude in songs ranging from the communal vocals of "Liberada" to "Constellation," which traces the connections between people over winding guitars and flares of brass. The pandemic moved Calexico to celebrate all the good things in life, and this celebration includes the Latin influences on their music. They lay down an irresistible groove with "Cumbia del Polvo," one of El Mirador's highlights; another, "The El Burro Song," paints a picture of a non-stop fiesta with joyous trumpets and merry strings. While this festive tone unites El Mirador, there's also an underlying tension that speaks to Calexico's awareness that blurring boundaries isn't always easy. Another close friend and contributor, Depedro's Jairo Zavala, appears on "Cumbia Peninsula," which describes a place where "truth is taken out back and beaten to a pulp," while Burns expresses this unfairness more literally on "El Paso": "Fighting for a border/That's hard to understand/And harder to find/Than the truth in this land." This kind of poetic, complex yet approachable music is pure Calexico -- though they've branched out over the years with plenty of success, El Mirador shows their roots are as strong as ever. ~ Heather Phares, Rovi
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