Iron and Wine with Calexico Play Avalon

With the air outside dropping steadily this December, it’s hard to remember how cold it seemed last Wednesday. As the damp wind whipped through our city’s streets, Bostonist hustled down Landsdowne St. to get to the Avalon for a night with Iron and Wine and Calexico, and was greeted with a warm reception.

At this point, midway through Calexico’s set, the temperature in the ballroom was considerably higher than outside, thanks in no small part to the Southwestern stepping of Calexico’s music. The core of the Tucson band—Joey Burns and John Convertino—have restlessly honed and expanded their sound: mariachi-style countrified rock with strong horn flourishes and interesting rhythms pulled from a variety of genres and geographic locales. With cowboy flannels, brushes for drumsticks, and an array of multi-instrumentalists, Calexico dried the air with dusty backyard ballads and piqued our pallets with jalapeno-flavored horns, pulling songs from their Quarterstick and Our Soil, Our Strength catalogues.

A brief, unique cultural experience followed in the form of flamenco guitarist Salvador Duran’s 3-song solo set of Spanish vocals, steed-like stomping, and vocal percussion beyond description (but we’ll dub here as “skillful mouth clucking”).

Iron and Wine (the SubPop vehicle for singer/guitarist Sam Beam) kept the fire burning low compared to Calexico’s salsa picante, with songs like “Cinder and Smoke.” Given the large venue, Sam Beam remarkably maintained his signature soft-spoken vocals, losing nothing in terms of intimacy. Throughout his set, a comforting low backdrop glow and sister Sarah Beam’s vocals and violin accompanied the singer’s gentler majority, while the full-band treatment of numbers like “Evening on the Ground (Lilith’s Song)” enchanted the sell-out (oversold?) crowd with pedal steel guitar. Hypnotic tune “The Trapeze Swinger” smoldered along, with embers glowing brighter when Beam decided to blow a little harder and pick a little stronger. The song perfectly embodied the rich warmth of Beam’s voice and songwriting that transcends place. With “The Trapeze Swinger” Iron and Wine negated notions that acoustic storytelling needs tiny venues, wrapping Bostonist in soothing bliss.

Calexico rejoined Iron and Wine, celebrating their collaborative 2005 release In the Reins. Starting off as the album does, with the title track, the collective group demonstrated how this release is a success in combining the best of both bands, without sacrificing any element of either. “In the Reins” was the highlight of the night with Calexico’s rattle, an over-arching steel guitar, Sam Beam’s easy delivery, and crowd-appreciated Salvador Duran’s Spanish operatic chorus. A cover of Velvet Underground’s “All Tomorrow’s Parties” was more than welcome as a group effort, retaining no hint of Nico’s coldness. This album and tour are great introductions to either act, especially for music fans who’ve heard of Iron and Wine from the Garden State phenomenon, but subsequently disregarded the singer’s music as somnambulistic. With the presence of so much pedal steal and Sam Beam’s Southern folk-tinged lyrics and vocals, forlorn Whiskeytown fans might find relief here and stop waiting for another Stranger’s Almanac or Pneumonia from Ryan Adams. Upbeat “A History of Lovers” performed with full shuffle, twang, and trumpeted relief is a nice place to start, as would “Sixteen, Maybe Less” for a little more Pnuemonia-like melancholia.

Interested? Check out NPR’s fine feature, part of the public radio program’s concert series. PLENTY OF MEDIA THEREIN.

Contributed by Michael Walker