See what I did there? Karin smiles or Karin's miles. I like to think I do a lot of the first one a while clocking up the second, my running partners may think differently... On Thursday night Bill and I went to see Calexico play at the Queen’s Hall in Edinburgh. I was looking forward to it because we had seen them in Glasgow about two years ago and it had been a really good night.
The Queen’s Hall is a strange venue. It was a church in a former life and the auditorium is oval with hard wooden pews still lining the walls and in the gallery. I’ve seen a few acts here over the years and all of them have been seated, so while it’s a small and intimate hall, you still feel a bit distanced from the performance, but acoustically it’s really good.
The support act was a Canadian band Wood Pigeon who I had never heard before apart from a quick preview on their website. They played about half an hour of sweet songs (maybe not quite so sweet as they sounded, I must check out some of the lyrics) and it was a pleasant introduction to the evening.
Calexico’s set started off quietly with just Joey Burns and Paul Niehaus (pedal steel guitar) doing a different take on Bisbee Blue – very slow and barely recognisable from the version on Garden Ruin but a good start to the set. The rest of the band came on and the tempo heated up and we were then treated to an hour and 45 minutes of diverse songs, mostly from the new album Carried to Dust. The album came out on 9th September so I hadn’t yet heard it, but the new songs sounded fantastic live and fitted in seamlessly with the old stuff.
All the members of Calexico are brilliant musicians and they play an amazing variety of instruments between them, including French horn and a vibraphone played with a bow. They all seemed to be really enjoying the evening (except maybe the bass player Volker Zander, I don’t know if he’s just shy but he never moved from his spot at the back all evening) and the audience certainly were having fun. There was a fair bit of dancing going on at the front and by the time we got to Guero Canelo and Alone Again, Or there was a lot of rhythmic clapping going on the gallery as well.
The sound was well-balanced and although we were standing very close to the speaker stacks, my aging ears didn’t suffer and were still working well enough to check out the album, which I bought on Friday. There are some good tracks on the album but they all sound better for having heard them live and listening to Calexico, Beirut and Broken Records always makes me want to get my trumpet out, but fortunately for the neighbours, it’s still in its case.
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