What do you get if you cross California with Mexico?

You get Calexico, a Tucson collective of musicians with an obsession with the southwest, playing tonight in a very different southwest.

Joey Burns and John Convertino, who both played in Giant Sand, front the bloke-ish band, who are touring to promote their new album ‘Feast of Wire’.

The band is so blokey that the audience mistakenly cheer when the soundman walks on stage; when the real band arrive, the six musicians appear to consist of two guitarists, lap steel guitar, double bass, keyboardist/percussionist and drummer.

Paul Niehaus played a twangy steel guitar

But no sooner had I written down the line-up, we were on to the second song and two of the musicians had switched to trumpets.

The slide guitar and driving rhythm makes the opening number a bit like a ‘Laid’-era James, and the songs from the new album sound like a Mexican Coldplay singing of sacrifice, of suicide, of spirits.

Trumpet-tinged instrumentals

The audience was enthusiastic, and varied in age and taste – a bit of an older crowd than the Academy is used to perhaps, earthy types who might be into world music; indeed, they responded best to the South American-tinged numbers.

‘Feast of Wire’, from the album of the same name, featured an accordion and ‘Sunken Waltz’ is like a country barn dance number performed by a mariachi band.

The music is theatrical and atmospheric, like the soundtrack to a film – certainly, there are shades of Ennio Morricone’s spaghetti western soundtracks – with Catholic imagery on the backdrop behind the band to match.

Fairy lights decorate the accordion, and outdoor party lights at side of the stage illuminate the band, who are busy with their bittersweet, poignant instrumentals – a much fuller sound live than on record.

‘Ballad of Cable Hague’ is a duet, and Joey sings to a French female singer – indeed some of the jazzier songs sound French, such as the accordion-heavy and trumpet-tinged instrumentals.

Calexico have a well-documented interest in 50s and 60s jazz, combined with the Californian surf guitar sound and a sprinkling of country (both Americana and any number of countries in the Americas).

Rattlesnakes and tumbleweed

Calexico’s music is like a soundtrack to a thousand westerns.

The atmospheric instrumentals could be written for that point in a film when the protagonist finds himself at a crossroads, having to make a decision which will affect the way the rest of the movie pans out.

Not a cheerful, breezy movie to be screened at a drive-in though, but a David Lynch film, shown to a handful of hardcore fans and drifters seeking shelter from the rain in a smoky picture house in Texas.

It’s very noir, especially with the smoke machines and silhouettes projected onto the backdrop.

Singer Joey Burns (a character from a film or what?) sounds like Bruce Springsteen in the desert, or Lee Hazelwood at his darkest.

The twangy steel guitar, played by Paul Niehaus, instantly transported me to a world of rattlesnakes and tumbleweed, a Western ghost town, in front of a cloudy sky-projected backdrop, followed by images of Dia de los Muertos.

There are drum rolls, and dramatic crescendo after dramatic crescendo; one song sounds like ‘Where is my mind?’ by the Pixies – all heavy bass and intense drumming.

Music can transport you to another world, but I’m always a little bit aware of world music being a bit like using terracotta paint in a gloomy British semi-detached – you can’t help feeling that the experience would be improved by really being in a hot and hot-blooded country.

But this music is like a travel brochure for the Americas, and I’m off to buy a one-way ticket to Calexico.