Album: Calexico

Feast Of Wire, Quarterstick

With a sales fanbase now nudging six figures in Europe alone, Calexico have achieved the apparently impossible, in securing commercial success within the resolutely marginal alt.country genre. It's not hard to see why, judging by the splendid Feast of Wire, their most accomplished album so far, on which the expressive vocabulary of John Convertino's percussion – "drumming" seems too blunt a term for such richly varied, subtle playing – is matched only by the range and imagination of Joey Burns's instrumental colour, gently wrested from virtually anything that can be plucked, bowed, hammered or keyed. Augmented here by a support cast that includes both jazz and mariachi horn sections, and the Lambchop pedal steel guitarist Paul Niehaus, the duo have created an evocative musical journey across the American South-west that takes in accordion waltzes, small-combo jazz, country-rock and Tex-Mex modes, punctuated in places by shorter instrumental miniatures that fit no known genre, but seem at home here. They are unquestionably the most cinematic of alt.country outfits, displaying a facility not just with the Monument Valley stylings of "Close Behind", but with other, odder ambiences such as "Attack El Robot! Attack!", a spooky, enigmatic piece reminiscent of Los Lobos's Kiko; "Crumble", a cool jazz hustle with tight solos from the trombonist Jeff Marchant and the guitarist Nick Luca; and the self-explanatory "Dub Latina". The songs traverse the South-west desert landscape, picking out moments of hope and futility with a refreshing lack of moralising: in this landscape, they suggest, such human values are soon dust.