Gig Review: Calexico/Iron & Wine, Manchester Academy, 21st April 2006

Calexico at Manchester AcademyThe tickets for this gig had been rattling around in the Indie Credential ticket drawer for months and although my anticipation of the gig had diminished a little during that time, my attention being diverted by some rather excellent shows by the Moz earlier in the same week, the gig turned out to be an absolute treat: three hours of (almost) non-stop brilliance from a collaboration made in heaven.

Iron & Wine
arrived first; just the impressively hirsute Sam Beam, an unidentified flame-haired female backing vocalist, and the ubiquitous, nay, legendary, Paul Niehaus on pedal steel. It’s sad that nowadays when you go to a gig in a venue of this size to see a quiet band it’s inevitable that your enjoyment of the gig will be tempered by other punters who have paid £15 to stand around chatting to their mates. Thus, the beautiful “Sodom, South Georgia” was ruined by people who didn’t seem to realise that the gig had started. Fortunately the chattering around us subsided in time for the next song, “Cinder & Smoke”, as people began to realise just how special a gig this was going to be. New song “Resurrection Fern” impressed but the real big hitter was the seven minutes of wistful beauty that is “The Trapeze Swinger” which held the audience entranced through its entirety. Half way through the set Iron & Wine “went electric”, bringing on the full touring band and cranking up the volume. They lost a little momentum here with songs like “On Your Wings” and “Free Until They Cut Me Down” sounding better suited to the acoustic treatment. Joey Burns joined them at some point and a superb rendition of “Woman King” gave way to the In The Reins section of the show where the rest of Calexico took to the stage to play a selection of tracks from their collaborative EP which began with a hypnotic “Red Dust” and ended four songs later with the excellent “Burn The Broken Bed”.

There followed a short five minute interlude before Mexican musician Salvador Duran took to the stage to perform three songs and went down very well with an unfamiliar crowd, largely due to his incredible, almost operatic, voice, and to his genuine humiliy and joy at the crowd’s reception.

After Salvador, Calexico finaly took to the stage and played two of the quieter numbers from their new Garden Ruin album, an album which on first listen was a major disappointment as it contains little of Calexico’s trademark tex-mex stylings and no instrumentals. A couple of weeks later and it’s beginning to sound rather good and seeing the band play these songs live certainly helped. “Yours And Mine” and “Cruel” sounded more lush than on record while “Panic Open String” and “Letter To Bowie Knife” sounded like classics-in-waiting. Of the older songs played “Stray” and “Black Heart” stood out in particular while “Not Even Stevie Nicks”, perhaps my least favourite Calexico song, didn’t sound too bad at all. My only gripe is that I’d have loved to have seen Iron & Wine’s backing vocalist take on the female parts in “Ballad Of Cable Hogue” as the song loses some of its impact with Joey Burns singing the whole thing. Anyway, it was a great set and they closed with “All Systems Red”, possible the highlight of Garden Ruin.

Iron & Wine joined them again for the encore and a stunning version of “He Lays In The Reins” with Salvador Duran before rounding a memorable night off with a beautiful, hushed version of “All Tomorrow’s Parties”. I can’t think of too many collaborations that have worked as well as Calexico/Iron & Wine; they’ve given us an EP that is every bit the equal of either band’s own work and now a tour which was better than we could have dared to hope.

2 Responses to “Gig Review: Calexico/Iron & Wine, Manchester Academy, 21st April 2006”

  • calexicofan Says:

    Great review. The backing singer for Sam was Sarah Beam, Sam’s sister. The gig was fanatastic and a treat at 3 hours long!

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