An intense Tex-Mex cocktail of spaghetti-western guitars, Latino grooves and parched country atmospherics – Calexico’s reputation is spreading like wildfire.

Their ambitious new album A Feast of Wire has had the music press tripping over their superlatives.

Live they are a bombastic improvisational carnival backed by a mariachi band in full costume.

Last November they sold out the Barbican. All of sudden everyone wants a piece of Calexico.

And it’s all a bit much for the band’s singer-song writer Joey Burns.

We just sit there with our instruments all day and score music as all this s*** is going down

Joey Burns

For years he has been a cult figure in the too-obscure alt.country scene.

But yesterday he did NME and The Sunday Times. Half an hour ago he was on Virgin Radio.

A self confessed reclusive, Canadian born Burns would much rather be sipping on a beer in Tuscan’s Hotel Congress.

Burns moved to the sleepy Arizona desert town almost Ten years ago.

He wanted to get away from show-biz glitz of LA’s fame factory-line.

He just wanted to make music. "Tucson is a small town and its so laid back. There’s great food and you’ve got the Senora Desert.

"It’s just got a unique flavour. It’s a great place to get away from the big city and to return to after being on the road."

Just the other night a couple was in the parking lot. I think the woman had ditched the guy cause he pulled out a gun and blew his brains out. I guess the heat gets to some people

Joey Burns

Calexico’s dusty tales of drifting misfits spiked with broken jazz beats and Mexican twangs are the cowboy sound of a border town cultures blend in the desert haze.

They’re the biggest thing to come out of Tucson since Joey’s favourite band Doo Rag:

"They’re also from Tucson. What a group! They take a vacuum cleaner and make it into a mike."

Burns’s imagination feeds on what is around him. He’ll sit outside his local bar or cruise around in his 60s Chevy and watch the loners, losers and loonies that wonder this strange town.

"Tucson is a soap opera. Characters blow in like tumble weed and disappear like ghosts.

"We just sit there with our instruments all day and score music as all this s*** is going down.

"It’s real slow so it gives us the chance to try new instruments all the time. When a majority of the music was written it already had this picturesque quality to it.

Two members of Calexico pose with a crab, as you do.

"When it came to sing over this stuff, I just sketched out a story, thinking of some of those characters that downtown.

"Hanging out at the hotel congress downtown, you’d hear of these freakish stories; like this lady who shot herself in one of the rooms upstairs, and some friends were staying there and found a bag of coke and a switch blade tucked up underneath a chair in their room.

"Then there was John Dilinger, the famous gangster of the 20s who stayed there with his wild bunch until the Hotel caught on fire which eventually led to his arrest.

"Just the other night a couple was in the parking lot. I think the woman had ditched the guy cause he pulled out a gun and blew his brains out. I guess the heat gets to some people."

Has ten years of Tucson heat got to Joey? He doesn’t think so. But the new album Feast of Wire is certainly a departure from their previous releases.

They’re breakthrough album 1998’s The Black Light was a bombastic blend of jagged country guitars and Mexican rhythms.

Feast is a subtler more introspective album.

Although the Latino flair remains, particularly on tracks like Dub Latina, gone are the huge horns and more poppy grooves.

They have replaced by the slower jazz times and low-fi electronica of Attack El Robot Attack!

It’s not the heat Joey says but a reflection of the bands growing confidence and willingness to experiment:

"The changes in mood are quite natural. As a band we’re always experimenting."

But will the anarchic fiesta that is Calexico live survive their growing musical development?

Past tours have been exciting and explosive affairs with Burns and Convertino backed by a Mariachi band given license to improvise at will.

However on a recent mini tour to support the new album the duo played the shows as a two-piece.

But Joey reassures me that when Calexico return to the UK in the Spring they will be fully backed up, "Horns, a string section, the works!"

Calexico ride into Nottingham’s Rescue Rooms on April 30.

Go along, shut your eyes and have a dance in the desert.

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