…in Flak Magazine, write-ups of “New Casablanca” by Shivaree and “I Turn My Camera On” by Spoon.

BONUS: An “outtake,” about “Sixteen Maybe Less” by Iron & Wine/Calexico, after the jump.

Iron & Wine/Calexico | “Sixteen Maybe Less” | In the Reins | Overcoat | 4:49
The Burns-Convertino powerhouse at the heart of Calexico grew out of the duo’s work as backing musicians for songwriters like Franklin Bruno, Howe Gelb and Richard Buckner. It seems pretty natural for them to provide their band’s country-mariachi border music mojo, windblown desert atmospherics, and rhythmic muscle in support of Samuel Beam’s whispery Folkways-goes-AM Gold song stylings. Their wonder twin powers activate on team-up EP In the Reins, elevating both sides of the slash.

“Sixteen, Maybe Less” gets keening pedal steel that plays up the song’s gentle air of nostalgia and regret, while sparse, limber drums give it a treacle-free base. It doesn’t hurt that it’s a hell of a song. Herein Beam deploys telling details and light touches to consider a humble life, and love, in flashback. The early phrases that jump out, “I spent an hour with you/should I want anything else?” and “I walked home smiling/I finally had a story to tell,” open up a sense of hope that are answered later by the finality in “Beyond the ridge to the west/the sun has left the sky.” Our narrator is still standing though, hand in hand with his love.