This is the third part of Dean Owens collaboration with Calexico and is finally available on vinyl as well as all the other formats. Owens is a Scottish singer/songwriter and his origins in Leith (Edinburgh) have framed the music he produced for years but this album takes him away to Tucson Arizona and the shimmering Arizona desert has taken its sounds and themes into his music in a wonderful and uplifting manner.
His dark and vaulting voice sits perfectly alongside parts of Calexico and their Latin and noir playing takes his music to a darker and larger place – at times you feel the size of the desert in his music.
The pacing of his music is genius – drawing the listener in to listen deeper into his lyrics but here with a wonderful Latinate trumpet sound almost trying to drag your attention away.
‘The Barbed Wire’s Still Weeping’ has everything. A desperate tale of refugees peering over the fence accompanied by whistled riff, huge soundscape and sumptuous strings. ‘Companero’ is a song for a lost comrade, ‘La Lomita’ lifts the mood with a song of prayer to a love to come. But really, individual songs aren’t the story – the album needs to be looked at as a single piece and it works, brilliantly, lifting and dropping the heart and completely wrapping the listener in the sound and the stories.
All of the little tropes and clues are there – lonesome whistles, Mexicali horns, strong & low drumbeats – but somehow he evades ever being ordinary or stock. This really is americana music at its finest.
