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ESSENTIAL NEW MUSIC

Essential New Music: Amor~Convertino’s “The Western Suite And Siesta Songs”

In 1997, Paris-based multi-instrumentalist Naim Amor moved to Tucson, Ariz., where he quickly found his way inside the orbit of Giant Sand and Friends Of Dean Martinez. Soon enough, he formed a band with FODM/Calexico’s Joey Burns and John Convertino, and even though their debut failed to take off, the collaboration has kept going, one way or another. On The Western Suite And Siesta Songs, Amor (Arizona) and Convertino (Ohio) are writing and recording separately, completing the tracks long-distance, and somehow making these 12 pieces work as a cohesive whole.

The flavor is spaghetti-Southwestern, with an occasional touch of Left Bank accordion. The playing—on delicately layered guitars, keyboards and percussion—is beautifully sympathetic, and the feeling as languorous as a long, straight line of asphalt baking under the desert sun, the heat rising in waves to conjure memories of roads not taken.

—Kenny Berkowitz