Officially the 5th album from prolific Arizona group Calexico, ‘Garden Ruin’ is a sprawling, pensive and hopeful affair written by the band’s core members Joey Burns and John Covertino, just prior to their collaboration with Iron and Wine in 2005. 

Said to be the pair’s most politically influenced work, Garden Ruin is a lyrically strong affair, delivered by a range of guest vocalists. In fact, Calexico have a penchant for using back-up singers as instruments and on this record in particular, have placed greater emphasis on such voices than strings and trumpets that usually litter Calexico’s material. The band are themselves no strangers to backing up other vocalists; specifically, Nancy Sinatra, Laura Cantrell and Neko Case to name but a few, while Burns and Convertino actually began performing together as Howe Gelb’s rhythm section in the band Giant Sand.   

Irrefutably there was a venerable pressure with the recording of ‘Garden Ruin’, that serves as the follow-up to the much acclaimed Iron & Wine/Calexico collaboration, In ‘The Rein’. While only a 7-track mini-album, the record was hailed as a perfect pairing and some of the best material released from both artists respectively (indeed a difficult act to follow).  Perhaps because of this pressure, ‘Garden Ruin’ appears to be the product of almost obsessive attention to detail and much to the success of the record listless experimentation.  More pertinently, there is an understated diversity to the album that actually serves to augment its accessibility. 

The sultry ‘Roka’ could effortlessly be the soundtrack to a spy film, ‘Lucky Dime’ is the rollicking pop song we’ve come to expect from Calexico while ‘Letter to Bowie Knife’ is sure to be a live favourite with its infectious sing-a-long chorus; “It’s Too Late”. “Yours and Mine” is decorated with fragile melancholy and leads perfectly onto the next country-infused track “Bisbee Blue” which promptly raises the mood. With the album crafted deliberately with plenty of open spaces, there is more than enough for the listener to latch onto.  However, the record is arguably flawed with some pedestrian moments.  Some of the songs here are only mildly effectual, perhaps the product of self-censorship or slight restraint.  However the album’s closing track, the huge 11-minute crescendo, ‘All System’s Red” suffers from no such self-control. 

The album’s final song, and clear highlight, is driven by unreserved anguish, a swirling fury of guitars and Burns’ cathartic wails.  Calexico will certainly make a truly great record, but ‘Garden Ruin’ isn’t quite it.