The Thread That Keeps Us, their ninth studio album, has traces of their usual mariachi horns and cinematic reveries, but they are tempered by dissonance.
Apocalyptic opener End of the World With You strikes the keynote with lines about "love in the age of extremes" and an increasingly abrasive guitar line that suggests our politically discordant world.
"Show me a sign when the world falls apart," Joey Burns sings in Under the Wheels, an insistent track punctuated with trumpets.
The album is still expansive enough to encompass restrained funk, rough-edged rock-and-roll and gentle acoustic balladry.
• Calexico. The Thread That Keeps Us. Anti.
• ★★★ (out of five)
— Steve Klinge/TCA
