The Thread That Keeps Us by Calexico

The Thread That Keeps Us, Calexico's ninth studio album, landed on Anti- on January 26, 2018, and the Tucson band sound as at home in their dusty skin as ever. Joey Burns and John Convertino, the pair who first played together in Giant Sand before starting Calexico in 1996, still sit at the center, folding mariachi, cumbia and tejano lilt into country twang, jazz shadings and the widescreen murk of post-rock.

Pitchfork heard songs about border politics and environmental disaster and called the whole thing comfort food that still mattered; Exclaim! grumbled that it ran long but found plenty to enjoy. That's about right: the desert noir the band is known for is all here, just angled toward the headlines. "End of the World With You" is the song that reached the countdowns, a title that makes the apocalypse sound like a decent date. It followed Edge of the Sun, and Years to Burn came next.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.