There are only so many jokes a person can make about sombreros, cacti and tumbleweed. And none of them are particularly funny.

Q. Why did the Mexican push his wife off a cliff?
A. Tequila.

See. I told you. Nevertheless, compared to Calexico’s latest offering that li’l old lame joke just about kicks ass. A joyless exercise in Mexican folk, ‘Feast of Wire’ is one for the chin-strokers amongst you. It’s all about musicianship see?

About a third of the album is devoted to sweeping spaghetti Western style instrumentals, which is frankly a huge bore. I mean, please…romanticising the bleak desert landscape, with its stark rock formations, vultures, carrion and assorted dusty porches is such macho bullshit. Snore.

You wouldn’t believe how excited I got though when I saw a track entitled ‘Attack El Robot! Attack!’. Yay, robots - I love robots. Sadly, it was but a fleeting high. The track is actually a Latin-jazz style instrumental. No robots. Not even a little one. No futuristic vocoder effects proclaiming that all earthlings must die, no laser sounds, no crazy theramin – nothing. Just the Latin and the jazz.

Track six, the ludicrously titled ‘Not Even Stevie Nicks’, is the closest thing to an accessible and happening tune on the album - a kind of alt.country Flaming Lips ditty about a man driving his car off the edge of a ravine. It’s really quite nice, although I personally feel a much better song could have been written had the lyricist concerned himself primarily with Ms Nicks’ alleged penchant for having cocaine blown up her arse at parties.

So there you have it. If you’re into your mariachi and you enjoy songs about illegal immigrants suffocating in the back of locked trucks whilst trying to sneak across the border, then senor…you just struck gold. The rest of you gringos should just head on back to the ranch before you get yourself slapped around and humiliated by los banditos. Arriba! Arriba! And so on.

words: Shaun Macartney