It needs to be said and it may as well happen now: Calexico and Iron & Wine could very well conquer the world together. Perhaps musically. Perhaps not. Each band does pretty all right on its own – Joey Burns with his mariachi horns and Tex-Mex sway and Sammy Beam with his banjo, sister and a whisper – but together? Magical. Who would have thunk it? Anybody who's tapped into their combined efforts on In the Reins in the last few months is who. But, as is too often the case for somewhat magic moments caught on an album (or EP, as is the case here), it takes experiencing them live to understand why they even tried their hand at this in the first place. They done did throw-down amazing.
At their stop in Salt Lake City (In the Venue, Monday), they gave plenty. That goes for everyone. They gave all they had to give and nobody – no fan, seasoned or budding – could have asked for more. It was everything anybody could have expected it to be. Okay, so few, if any, expected the hippy-dippy Iron & Wine guitarist to open things up by noodling away instrumental after instrumental, dotted with Sam Beam originals for the wariest of listeners. But it provided a pleasant background – the onstage version of elevator snoozak – as the place filled, filled and kept filling s'more.
If you include him – which, for the sake of argument, we will – we received no less than four concerts in one evening. That's some serious bang for your buck. Consider the trend of including no less than 2-3 bands along with the main event at concerts. Consider then the fact (yes, fact!) that neither is ever really that good. To combat that, Calexico played a set all on its own (2), followed by another with Iron & Wine (3), joining forces for a finale (4). This was the kind of musical night you didn't tire of.
Calexico delivered. It sounded much, much better than what Salt Lake got about a year ago when it opened for Wilco. Remember that? The combination of fuzzy microphones and overall bad sound meant no real words got heard, but the horns were loud and proud. This year we got understandable words with our songs and horns! Happy day! Judging from Monday's show, Calexico is clearly a band that deserves more than opening for others already; this may be the tour that pushes it over that hump. And it's been a long time coming. Songs like “Yours and Mine”, “Guero Canelo” and “Jesus and Tequila” were played over an ongoing screen of rodeo sequences and black-and-white wild horses. If you're going to be from Tucson, you may as well scream it with pictures of the wild open West.
Singer-guitarist Burns plays the morose card perfectly, marrying what comes out as sad sack vocals with the sound and feel of a slightly-inebriated mariachi band, one that's fighting to stay on its feet and play one final song. Nobody's doing it and nobody will be doing it again soon and, well, there you have it – they're category creators. Beware of the followers.
It wasn't surprising that a bulk of the crowd seemed more intent on hearing the Iron & Wine. Goes down nicer. Once Beam took the stage – along with his sister Sarah and the aforementioned guitarist – it took just two songs (“Sunset Soon Forgotten”, “Muddy Hymnal”) before the crowds started to hone in on his quietude, moths to his flame. But, instead of the continuous slow burn most expected – and got, too, in extend-o-doses – Beam took to rocking out as he felt like doing so. And he did.
“Jezebel” got the jangle treatment, as did many others in the 11-song set. The best part about it, though? Easily the stripped-down version of “The Trapeze Swinger.” This is a song you lose bladder control over. It's over nine minutes of image after image – like six poems smashed into one, each just bleeding from one into the next. He covers the circus, God and Lucifer and love, for starters. Just when you think it's going to end, it doesn't … and gets better in the process. Just the fact he could get through that mishmash and remember all the words is reason enough for applause. It caused grown men to hold their breath all during it and yell out that they loved him afterwards.
Sam and crew didn't get much of a breather between the time they ended and started up again with Calexico in tow. Once they all got settled, however, In the Reins was presented in its entirety. Their two bands made up 10 people trying to get by on a stage that was longer than it was wide. This meant four guitars (one being a lap slide), a couple drummers, a xylophone, a tambourine and, hey, did we mention there were horns before? Again, it made more sense with them right in front of your face doing it than it did (does?) on their disc. The elements just shine brighter there, what, with their Tex Mex and jazz and blues and folk and old-fashioned rock. You can't put a name on it. Calexico brought the country (and accordion) out of Iron & Wine on “Prison on Route 41” and the tables turned when Burns quieted way down for an appropriately haunting take on “Dead Man's Will”. Sometimes the voices would blend so well that one singer would take to changing his own up just to distinguish himself from the other.
As for covers, well, the Velvet Underground's “All Tomorrow's Parties” will likely never sound the same – and the xylophone pounding throughout will be ringing in our ears a long, long time still. As for “Wild Horses” (originally done by the you-know-who's), it bested the original. It made you forget someone else even recorded it in the first place, something every good cover ought to do anyway. Hardly a straight take on what came before it, it was the Stones with boogie-beat breaks between verses. Somebody get these guys on the jam rock circuit, stat!
--Dainon Moody
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