A tour commemorating the 20th anniversary of their landmark 'Feast Of Wire' album, the core of Calexico – guitarist-vocalist Joey Burns and drummer John Convertino, along with the more than able supporting players – performed that album nearly in entirety, the songs not played live presented as pre-recorded cues.
The first of these, the out of sequence 'The Book And The Canal' is played as the band, almost all dressed in a uniform black, arrive onstage. The opening song is the delicate, piano accordion-led 'Sunken Waltz'.During the redemptive 'Quattro (World Drifts In)', Joey smiles as the horns come to the fore, with Martin Wenk and Jacob Valenzuela on trumpets. A pre-recorded 'Stucco' is played as an intro to the paced, melancholic soundtrack of 'Black Heart'; a notable mention must be made of Martin now on slide guitar.
After the uplifting guitar riffing of instrumental 'Pepita', the amiable Burns addresses the audience significantly for the first time giving the band a moment of repose, before 'Not Even Stevie Nicks' takes off like a jet plane.
The lyrics to Joy Division's 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' are inserted into the song before it transforms into that song. At first it seems incongruous among their own material, more of a contrast than the later performed cover of Love's 'Alone Again Or', but then Joey encourages the audience and they sing-along, the band making it their own.
Joey sings and plays an excerpt from The Beatles' 'I'm Only Sleeping' commenting: "This next song was inspired by. . ." and the band join him with 'Close Behind' sounding like a Latin version of the original 'Space: 1999' theme, with Martin playing trumpet while holding the accordion and whistling. In case you missed it, afterwards Joey comments: "Martin Wenk on the whistle and trumpet and piano accordion. Three things."
Joey introduces 'Woven Birds' with: "Are you ready for a sad song? Don't worry, it's not gonna hurt."
Citing the spaghetti western aspect of Ennio Morricone's music is an easy reference, but there is more to Calexico than that narrow description as evidenced by the diversion into the self-styled jazzy funk of 'Attack El Robot! Attack!'.
Joey asks: "Are you ready for more trumpets?" prior to 'Dub Latina', setting the tone for the next few songs including an audience clap-along with the other cover, 'Alone Again Or', while multi-instrumentalist Jacob Valenzuela leads a call and response during 'Guero Canelo', which has the audience grooving.
With the late-night jazz club vibe of 'Crumble' they become another band entirely, further demonstrating their musical versatility and to close the set, 'No Doze' is a slow burn, like a phoenix rising out of the ashes.
Nearly completing their play-through of 'Feast Of Wire' they leave the stage briefly prior to an encore, a pre-recorded 'Whipping The Horse's Eyes' soundtracking their return.
Joey generously steps back to allow Valenzuela and then guitarist-bassist Brian Lopez to take the lead vocals to bookend this closing portion consisting of three songs, spanning a twenty-year period from 1998 to 2018.
Joey had earlier commented it had been a while and despite that, it is doubtful anyone in attendance was in any way disappointed in the least although a second encore would have been gratefully received.
