Richmond Fontaine-plays We Used To Think The Freeway Sounded Like A River-14 songs written around and about the Pacific Northwest

Aside from having the longest title in the history of popular music, the title also gives you some early warning about how poetic this group is. Each of their songs is like the great American novel in five minutes or less. Poignant, knowing details mix with an ineffable eye for the realities of the human heart-so hard to describe, but when done correctly, they stay with you forever. Musically they mix Wilco’s strong delivery and dead-on sense of melody and Calexico’s exotic take on modern rock through a prism of country tradition (thanks in large part to Paul Brainard’s evocative pedal steel and trumpet work.) The overall theme of the album is loss, lonliness and yearning for an unsure past-best expressed in the title track which describes beautifully how things that were once comforting can become emotionally empty with the events of one night. This is an album (and a band) that will stay with you long after you’ve counted the millionth sheep on some sleepless night.
Paul Epstein

The Lucky Few - Calexico at Twist & Shout

A highly select crowd of smart musicos were lucky enough to be present at a rare Saturday in-store at Twist & Shout. We usually shy away from Saturday events but when a band as good as Calexico comes knocking, well you just have to say yes. We limited entrance so we could also continue doing business on such a busy day, so about 100 ecstatic fans got to see a wonderful, intimate 50-minute set of songs from their upcoming album Carried To Dust (9/9), some older songs and a few covers (Love’s “Alone Again Or” was a real standout). The sound was impeccable, Joey was playful, the crowd was greatly entertained and the entire band (including mariachi horn players) could not have been nicer to the fans and staff.

Thanks, of course, to the band for being so enthusiastic about the the event and so complimentary of the store. Thanks also to Leslie from Touch & Go, our employees for letting us borrow their amps, and to Shawn from Devotchka for lending his drumming paraphenlia. Oh, and to whomever gave the band a keyboard to use!

Check out them signing our big red guitar.....um, Joey signing his name backwards? Who does that??

Check out their "electro version" of Gnero Canelo