Too often, contemporary albums are a jumbled mix of singles rather than a coherent piece. There is no sense of reprise, and 10 out of 12 songs will serve as calk to fill in the cracks around two songs intended for airplay. So, I was delighted when I heard that Calexico was releasing an album loosely inspired by the Hollywood writers’ strike, which tells the story of someone who leaves work, and sets out on a journey with a marked map. The new release, “Carried to Dust,” doesn’t follow this narrative rigidly, but the concept of traveling lays the groundwork for a richly diverse and complex album.

The band, which comprises only two core members: vocalist Joey Burns and drummer John Convertino, is named after the California town, Calexico, which abuts the Mexican border. Indeed, the town’s name comes from the bordering state and country (Cal~ from California, and ~exico from Mexico). It is rare that a band’s name so aptly describes its music. Calexico writes songs in both Spanish and English, sometimes switching languages in the same song, such as on the new album’s opener, “Victor Jara’s Hands.” This approach augments the sense of wandering expressed in the lyrics: “All alone and lost/ My path is lit by flame/ Crossing lands never seen/ Crossing rivers of my destiny.”

Just as Calexico takes liberty with switching between English and Spanish on the album, the band liberally deploys influences from a wide musical array. The album’s second track, “Two Silver Trees,” immediately introduces a stylistic change from a flamenco-ridden feel to a more atmospheric sound. When listening to the song, you can almost hear a living, breathing body. You can feel the heartbeat of the bass pulsating and building. The chorus—dazed, elegant and celestial—invokes Iron and Wine singer-songwriter Sam Beam, who is featured later in the album. A reverb-heavy guitar, a catchy piano riff and a textural melodica create an alluring blend of ambient and clear-cut sound. It is a perfect bed for Joey Burns’ whispery voice. Here, Calexico creates the sound of a ghost, a ghost that floats in and out of the album. The apparition emerges again in tracks like “Man Made Lake,” in which an actual ghost metaphor is used in the first verse: “I’m gonna walk these streets/ Of cold concrete/ Like I’m a ghost/ Searching for its grave.” The song evokes a nightmarish and twisted future with no organic or human qualities, poetically expressed in the lyrics: “Then I’ll gather the leaves from cell phone trees.” That line may be a token of Calexico as a traveling band, because you really can find signal towers disguised as conifers splayed on U.S. highways. Perhaps Burns got the lyrics through touring.

Themes of disarray, longing, and the album’s overarching theme of drifting to uncharted territories are again found in “House of Valparaiso.” The song extracts the blissful, romantic uncertainty of the sea—that wonder and awe we often feel when at the beach, gazing across an endless ocean plain. It’s what Herman Melville must have felt when musing on Nantucket Island. The concept of seeking communication and a sign of life, uttered at the end of “Man Made Lake,” is revisited in “House of Valparaiso,” which alludes to a lost love. Often, those who yearn for a distant lover will turn their heads each time a door opens, thinking that person has returned. Ordinary people walking on the street who may have similar hair, clothing or posture will, for a second, morph into the likeness of the absent lover. For the character in “House of Valparaiso,” the ocean takes on the likeness of a lost flame: “Is that your shape in the foam of the sea/ After all these years coming home to me.”

Two instrumentals on “Carried to Dust” offer soothing breaks, giving space and relief to an album whose lyrical themes can be heavy. “Falling from Sleeves” struck me. It  combines a simple Venezuelan cuatro pattern, jazzy yet sparing drum brushes, and a stirring cello arrangement. It is simultaneously ambient and organized. The simplicity of each instrument’s part, strategically placed in the song, adds up.

Good job on “Carried To Dust,” Calexico.

www.myspace.com/casadecalexico

This review was originally published on WERS.org, September 9, 2008.

You could tell they were tired. It was the last day of Dr. Dog’s longest tour to date, and that morning they were still drinking beer when some people are sipping their first cup of java.

WERS was bustling that Friday. If people weren’t rushing to set up equipment, they were finalizing plans for a quickly approaching Live Music Week, in which the station would host nearly 40 in-studio performances. Everybody was busy, except the members of Dr. Dog. In front of a bright window looking out on Boston Common sat Scott McMicken, Toby Leaman, Zach Miller, Juston Stens and Frank McElroy, quietly staring at the floor. Calm, unassuming and passive, Leaman had the reflective expression of someone waiting for a train home.

“You’re all from Philadelphia, right?” I asked, trying to spark a conversation with the band. Their blank faces grew alert, and Leaman, wearing a plaid shirt and blue beanie, said he grew up outside of the city, in West Grove, Pa. Being a Chester County native myself, I made small talk about familiar towns and schools. When I mentioned that their new album, “Fate,” was July’s WERS Album of the Month, they grew humbly delighted.

It’s good they take compliments well. Since touring with My Morning Jacket in 2004, bloggers and music critics have praised the band, and, according to a July Philadelphia Inquirer article, even Lou Reed has called them his new favorite group. But recognition didn’t always come easily for Dr. Dog. They played for five years largely unknown. Until recently, their fan base didn’t generate enough money for the group to spend on hotel rooms while touring, so they usually stayed with the first person to offer them a place to crash, says Leaman. This rambling lifestyle brought them many friends, and also a few situations they would rather forget.

“There have been a lot of houses we’ve just straight up left,” says Leaman.

Luckily for Dr. Dog, the success of their last few albums gave them the luxury of two hotel rooms for most stops on their latest tour.

“We’re not couch surfing anymore,” Leaman says.

Around 1:30 p.m., Dr. Dog began setting up for their performance. Despite their lack of sleep, they became vivacious and sprightly as soon as they started warming up. They love playing, and it shows. When WERS in-studio host James Clark started his interview with the band at 2:30 p.m., keyboardist Zach Miller was noticeably anxious to play. If you listened closely, you could hear ambient sounds leading into their first song, “The Breeze,” for 30 seconds before the song’s commencement.

Then, after a few words with the DJ, the rest of the band joined in, and McMicken sang: “Are you moving/ much to fast/ and the good times/ that just don’t last/ if you’re always on the go/ put that needle to the groove/ and sing.”

Their live performance of the song was slightly nuanced at the bridge, sung by Leaman instead of McMicken. Leaman, who had been sipping on a licorice-based soar throat remedy he bought from Whole Foods, sounded extra raspy, and deep: “Are there dark parts to your mind/ hidden secrets left behind/ if no one ever goes/ but everybody knows.” He could have sung anything and it would have sounded profound. Really, the lyrics could have been about cheese dip, dental floss, non-stick frying pans—anything really—and Leaman’s voice would still give you chills.

Between songs, Scott McMicken talked about choosing their new album’s title. “Like many things with Dr. Dog, it sort of started with no real purpose or intent, and then quickly became full of purpose and intent,” McMicken said. “We tend to gravitate toward things on a real basic level, like: ‘Yeah, that sounds cool, I like that … I can envision that,’ and then once you’re comfortable with it on that level you start to create meaning.”

Everything gained a purpose, including the album’s artwork. The painting of Bonnie and Clyde featured on the cover is by Ken Ellis, a bartender at a Chicago joint called The Rainbow Club. As fate would have it, Dr. Dog noticed the painting upon stumbling into the bar, and asked Ellis who made it. They bought it, and the original painting, which is almost life size, hangs in the band’s Philadelphia studio.

Leaman sang the second song, “Ancients.” Screaming wildly, he evoked Joe Cocker, and one of his influences, Tom Waits. We were hearing the loud, unrestrained bark of the Dog, and by this time, a crowd of people were gathered outside on the sidewalk, peering into the station through the windows. Leaman’s speaking voice was noticeably rattled after belting out the final notes of “Ancients.” Before starting another song, McMicken talked about the band’s songwriting process. He said about half of their songs are old, sometimes going back six or seven years, and the rest are new. “In my brain,” McMicken said, “it gives a sense of variety because you’ve got these songs that you wrote when you were a completely different person than you are now next to these songs you wrote yesterday.” It was somewhat coincidental that McMicken talked about using old songs as he led into the third and final track of the performance, “Old Days.” The lyrics begin: “Let go of the old ones/ we’ve got some new ones/ hold on to the good stuff and let go/ and get real tough.”

After Dr. Dog finished, they packed up their van and took their instruments to the Middle East in Cambridge, ending their tour with San Diego band Delta Spirit. They start their European tour on October 30.

drdogmusic.com

This article was originally published on WERS.org, October 12, 2008

Chris Baio backstage at The Orpheum in Boston. (Photo courtesy of Jessica Teller/WERS)

Before playing a sold out show at the Orpheum in Downtown Boston, Vampire Weekend bassist Chris Baio sat down for an interview with WERS.org. Baio talks about blogs, bands and Boston, and reflects on the past 18 months on the road.

You had a few weeks between touring Europe and playing shows on the East Coast. Did you have the chance to work on some new music in that time?
Very little, actually. We did have a practice that was exclusively to work on new stuff and also on a remix together … right before Thanksgiving. Other than that, I mean, we were on Conan and we did the MtvU Woodies, and other than that it’s only been a couple of other days at home really. So it hasn’t been long enough, I guess. Our game plan, as far as new material goes, is we’re going to finish up this tour in a week. We’re going to take two and a half weeks off, and then on January 4th we’re going to regroup and just really start writing and recording.

Do you plan on working with any other artists in the future? Perhaps some African pop musicians?
We haven’t really ruled anything out. I think we’re always open to playing with other musicians and definitely working with other people. For right now the game plan is the four of us in a rehearsal space for the immediate future. But I could definitely see us working with someone else, whether it’s someone that we mix with or someone that we have come play on our record, we’ll see.

Your life has changed pretty drastically in the past 18 months. Does your success ever feel surreal, like it’s not happening?
In a lot of ways I would say it’s the opposite. It’s almost more natural, which maybe sounds a little bizarre, but it’s just the life that we’ve been living for the past 18 months. We spend so much time just sitting in cars going from place to place, just sort of hanging out as friends having, you know, pretty stupid downtime or whatever, and it’s not like it’s a surreal moment. I mean, there are definitely some points in the past year and a half that stick out. One being when we played Glastonbury over the summer, and we walked out on stage and there were 40,000 people, which you know, I cannot honestly think I’ve ever been to a gathering of people that are that many. So to go out on stage and perform for that many people was definitely a rush and definitely surreal. Playing SNL, also, in March, which is such an institution—I can think back to so many performances there and just having watched the show growing up—that was definitely a special moment for us. But, overall, those moments are very few and far between in the average life of a touring band.

Is Vampire Weekend’s success influenced by the blog era?
I think it’s very hard to say, I mean, maybe the way that our music spread, which is through the Internet, shows a different playing field from how the music industry was 15, 20 years ago. A lot of people sometimes ask us, “Oh, do you credit blogs for all your success?” But the fact of the matter is we were interviewed by Rolling Stone before Stereogum ever wrote about it, so it’s hard to find a clear causality there, if you know what I’m saying.

What about college radio’s influence?
I mean … our label XL, it’s very important to them. I know that we’ve printed up certain singles specifically for college radio, and as far as I know we’ve gotten good support there.

And you worked at Barnard’s college radio station. Did that have any affect on you? Did you end up being the one booking the shows early on for Vampire Weekend?
Yeah, a lot of the shows I would book early on. One of our first shows off-campus was at a place in Brooklyn called Pete’s Candy Store that is super, super small. There’s a PA there, but you control it from the stage. It can probably fit maximum 30 people. But that was from me sending an e-mail out and just attaching an mp3, which I found to be the way that I always communicated with people when I was doing college radio, and sort of spreading music or having music sent to us. And also, when our first tour came around, which was in July of 2007, which was right after I graduated, I had spent the last semester of college booking a lot of that tour. About midway through we had an actual booking agent come on and fill a lot of the gaps, but a lot of the tour was booked by me, definitely.

Must have been crazy to get out of college and jump right into this.
My timing was pretty lucky, I mean, yeah. I graduated, I moved home with my mom for two months, and we got in a minivan in July and just went to the other side of the country, all the way North.

And you’re a year younger than everyone else in the band.
Yeah, everybody else graduated in 2006.

So, Rostam and Chris Tomson, they both studied music at Columbia.
Yeah.

But you were in Russian regional studies. So, if I asked you two years ago what you would be doing in 2008, what would you have said?
I also studied math, and actually, during my last semester I interviewed for Teach for America, and I had accepted a job to teach math at that point. But I had to tell them that I wasn’t going to be able to do that when we all decided to go for it as a band. So if you had asked me two years ago–if you asked me February 2007–I probably would have said, “Oh, I’ll be teaching math two years from now.”

Do you keep up with what people are printing about the band at all?
Definitely early on. I would say that can be an encouraging thing, but at this point, everybody’s said everything about us, negative or positive, which I think is sort of the nature of blogs and music on the Internet. … To really keep up with it, odds are I’d be more, yeah, I don’t think it would really help me as a musician, or as a person, to really care. It sort of just is what it is and it’s sort of this world that if you really want to get wrapped up and really care about what people are saying about you on the Internet, you can search out so much and read so much, but at the same time, if you don’t look at it, it’s like it doesn’t exist. That’s kind of where I’m at now, having read both a lot of really positive things and a lot of really negative things about our band.

What’s the most annoying criticism that you’ve heard?
(long pause) That’s tough to say. The most annoying? I don’t know–I never like it when other people in bands have sort of–I guess I would say talk shit about us, because I think they’re basically doing the exact same thing we are, which is just making their music and playing, and we’ve never talked shit about anyone else because that’s sort of a weird mentality, I find, to bring to music. I mean, competition in one way can be good, if you’re trying to really better yourself and make the best records you possibly can, but when it manifests itself in saying “Oh I think this band fucking sucks,” I don’t know, I just don’t find that constructive in any way.

Are there any artists or albums that everybody in the band would place in their top 10?
We’ve been having a lot of trouble with that this year. I have found, very sadly, that with all the touring we’ve done, I’ve listened to the least amount of new music of any year, I think, in my life. I mean, we all like The Walkmen record. I don’t think all of us have heard the Gang Gang Dance record, but some of us like it—I really like that record. Lil Wayne, some, but I don’t think all of us have listened to it. It’s hard.

Have you ever played in Boston before?
Yeah, we’ve played here a bunch actually. We played at the Middle East twice. The first time was in August of last year, and the second time was about a year ago at the end of our second U.S. tour in December. We played at the Middle East again with our friends Ra Ra Riot and Tokyo Police club. In February we played at the Museum of Fine Arts, which was really fun because my sister went to the Museum School … she graduated in the Spring. It was her last semester, so it was really nice to hang out with her and to sort of see where she was going to school and then to play at the Museum.

The Middle East is an awesome venue.
Yeah, totally, we had a great time both times there, and then, it’s sort of weird, you would think that since February we would have come back to Boston, but it seems like a lot of the touring we’ve done has been abroad. All summer we were in Europe and Australia and Japan. But it seems kind of weird that we wouldn’t go to such a big city three hours from where we live since February. I think it’s really nice that we’re coming here and pretty much ending our year here, for the most part.

A few days ago there was a review about you guys in the New York Times. The writer, Jon Caramanica, said Vampire Weekend raises several questions. Most importantly: are plaid and khakis really cool again? Are they?
(laughs) Sure, why not, I wear plaid all the time. I think people should just wear what they want and what they feel comfortable in. If it’s plaid and khakis, that’s fine, if it’s something else, that’s fine too. I actually don’t wear khakis.

Which two bands would you rather see in a Royal Rumble: Puddle of Mudd vs. Staind, or Papa Roach vs. P.O.D.?
(laughs) I would go with the first one … uh, yeah, I would say that first one. But I don’t want to wish ill on any band, so I hope everybody could sort out their differences before it came to blows.

You’re really big on not talking bad about any of the other musicians out there.
Yeah. Because they’re just doing the same thing. They’re just out there making their music and even if it doesn’t necessarily appeal to me, it does appeal to some people.

That’s remarkable…
Well, there was one point kind of early on where some of us had sort of made fun of Nickelback a little bit in interviews. But then we were playing a venue called the Kasbah in San Diego, and in the office there were all of these Playboys—they were getting free issues of Playboy—and in it there was this 8-page interview with Chad Kroeger, the singer of Nickelback, and they were asking him like, “Oh how do you deal with all of this hate, I mean, so many people hate you,” and he’s like, “Yeah, I don’t know, I mean, I’m not Hitler, I’m just writing some songs.” I think I can … (nods)

Who would you rather see perform as a solo artist: the lead singer from Nickelback, or Fred Durst, from Limp Bizkit?
I don’t know, I read somewhere that Fred Durst is directing movies? Is that true? Do you know that?

Yeah, I did hear about that, I mean, I haven’t seen a lot of buzz around it…
Yeah, but there’s a precedence of him striking out on his own artistically outside of the band that he operates in, so maybe there’s a chance of him going solo one day. (laughter)

Sorry about these, I’m kind of running out of questions, but … anything else about what you’re going to do in the future?
In the future, you know, like I said we have a week of touring left on this album which is pretty incredible, because we’ve been doing this for a year and a half. Beyond that we’re going to get a little bit of rest at the end of the year and sort of put our nose to the grind in the beginning of the year and work on our album. We’re going to go to Mexico and South America in March for a little break in between when we’re working. I mean, I’m sure we’ll have some songs recorded by then. It will give us some perspective on it since we’re not going to be working on it everyday at that point. Then, you know, hopefully when we get back we’ll work for a couple more months, start touring in the summer, put an album out early fall.

I heard somewhere—I don’t know where it was, but that you guys went to Columbia?
Oh yeah, (laughs) what are the odds? Where did you find that?

Yeah, it took a lot … but … is your music inspired by the place where the band formed?
I mean, I think you could probably say that about almost any band, that the personalities that come together, and then the place that it happens obviously has some influence on the music they make. How to isolate that, and how that sort of manifests itself in our music, as opposed to something that I listened to when I was 12, or something that someone else in the band listened to right when the band was forming, it’s hard to say.

This interview was originally published on WERS.org, December 14, 2008.