Performance review: Iron and Wine with Calexico at the Wiltern

Wow.

So, I generally avoid writing about music because, frankly, I don't have the right vocabulary. Kasha berates me for not being able to explain why I love what I love and hate what I hate in terms as precise as those I can use to describe, e.g., a piece of fruit of a type she's never seen. But while I know what I mean when I say I like something because it's "swoopy" or "intense," those words certainly have no specific musical meaning, and certainly wouldn't necessarily mean the same thing to someone else. In fact, it is one of the great areas where I fall back on the immortal line of Supreme Court Justice Stewart Potter re: pornography: "I know it [music I like or dislike] when I see it." I suppose this isn't entirely true; the better analogy may be to wine, which I also lack the vocabulary to decribe in terms that wine people might understand. I tend to fall back on generalizations such as "I generally love Alsatian whites and dislike Italian reds" or "I like anything in waltz time but don't care for reggae." Just don't press me on the whys or wherefores, or I'm gonna be Stewart Potter again.

However.

Last night, I saw a really great show. I was expecting it to be good, I've liked what I've heard of each band's music, but this performance was really something quite a bit greater than the sum of its parts.

Iron and Wine is, more or less, one heavily-bearded guy with a guitar. With the exception of the "Woman King" EP, which had a fair amount of additional instrumentation, a lot of the Iron and Wine stuff I've heard has been in the same vein as Elliot Smith when he was at his most prettily acoustic (but with less depressing themes). Calexico, on the other hand, is a musically eclectic band whose music I would describe, if forced to at gunpoint, as alt-country indie folk-rock inflected with mariachi. Um, and stuff. The two groups recently teamed up to produce an EP called "In the Reins," so this was a tour in support of that.

There was an opening act, which I think was Califone, who I think I once randomly saw play a concert in my friend Emily's yard, but who I think at the time were a Spinanes-style boy/girl indie rock combo, though this was a guy with a guitar and a pleasant folky country vibe. ETA: I'm smoking crack. The band that played my friend's lot party was Penifore (see comments below). WTF, yo. I'm getting old, and it was 1998.

Calexico was next, and they were, as I said to Cate, "the band you move to Austin because you feel like that's what you'll get to hear EVERY WEEKEND." In a good way. They were much blues-ier than I've heard them be on their recordings, and on at least one song built up the kind of wall of sound that's more commonly associated with U2 or Radiohead. In a good way. Indie guru uber-bassist Mike Watt came out and played for a song, too.

After a brief break, Iron and Wine took the stage. The guitarist was joined by a female violinist/singer/tambourine player and occasionally by a percussionist and... I think a bassist. Many of the songs were in the quiet acoustic vein, but most of the songs from "Woman King" were in the same surprisingly (at least relatively) down-and-dirty blues-y vein as Calexico's had been. "Jezebel," one of my favorite folk-y songs from "Woman King" became more of a... dirty bouncy fox-trot of sorts. At one point shortly after the singer smiled that the crowd was "remarkably well-behaved," someone decided to, you guessed it, yell "Freebird!!", which I guess is now.... funny again in a post-retro-ironic way? Or something? Regardless, the singer obligingly smirked and grinned into the mike, "if I leeeeeeaaaaave here tomoooooorooww...." Hee.

The real treat, however, was watching the groups play together. There was no real break between the end of the Iron and Wine set and the beginning of the joint set; instead, the stage suddenly became full of musicians. I, again, do not have the vocabulary to describe what they were all playing, but there were between 10 and 12 people on stage during the entire set. There were two full drum kits and an additional percussion stand, the violinist/singer/tambourine player, a lap steel, 4 to 5 people at any given time on guitar/bass type instruments, and what must have been at least thirty different instrument stands. The opening song was the opening track of "In the Reins," which is my favorite song on the EP, in no little part due to its being (duh) a waltz. And it. Was. Amazing. Cate and I kind of looked at each other a bit slack-jawed when it was finished, and agreed afterward that as much as we loved everything that came after, we almost wished that song had been the end of the set, because it set such a high standard. Recorded music can obviously be produced to sound fantastic, but this was live, and so complex but perfect it was just a treat to hear. And that's not even the corniest thought I had about it, but I'm not going live with the other one.

At any rate, the set was fantastic, and included both songs from the EP and not, the latter including covers of "All Tomorrow's Parties," "Always on My Mind" (with Victoria Williams), and "Wild Horses" (in the encore).

So if they're coming to your town, go see this show. It's a pretty damn great combo, and not one you're guaranteed to see again, since this EP was probably a one-off.