I hate critics who, when rating an artist’s discography, choose an obscure release as their favourite. Most of the time, the smug subtext is ‘I’ve heard this album and you probably haven’t but it’s the best thing they ever did’.
One of the best aspects of the download culture is that these pseudo-hipsters can quickly be exposed if/when they’re talking bollocks.
I write to preface my assertion that Aerocalexico is Calexico’s finest album.
This CD was originally limited to 2000 copies and available only at shows or via the Calexico website. This was in the year 2001, back in the day when ‘limited edition’ meant more than it does now. Nowadays, of course, there’s an unlimited supply of just about anything from your friendly neighborhood P2P file sharing website.
I bought this CD at a show the band from Tucson, Arizona played at the Vidia Club in Cesena, Italy and giving it a spin again now it struck what a truly great album it is.
A lot of tour only discs comprise offcuts that never made it to official releases. Aeroclaxico is really no exception but as it came out when the band were at a creative peak, the quality is still remarkably high and it’s a carefully assembled collection with a generous running time of almost an hour.
What I like is that it shows how open Joey Burns and John Convertino’s were and are to all sorts of musical influences including country-rock, Tex-Mex,ambient and jazz.
There are a couple of ace covers (an arrangement of All The Pretty Horses and a version of Nick Drake’s Clothes of Sand) and there’s even a cheesy but cute Christmas song Gift X-Change. Other standouts are the rocky Crooked Road And The Briar and the original (i.e. non-widescreen) version of the mighty Crystal Frontier.
It can still be purchased direct from the Calexico website store and, trust me, it’s worth tracking down.
