Most Calexico fans were surprised, if not dismayed, by Garden Ruin, the band’s 2006 LP. Abandoning their distinctive desert noir soundscapes, the Tucson-based ensemble shifted towards a sound that was almost indie-pop and a more direct lyrical style that grappled with the politics of the day. Their new release, Carried to Dust, restores the band’s hallmarks; but as frontman Joey Burns tells EYE WEEKLY, that doesn’t mean the band’s taking a step backwards.

Victor Gastelum, who has done the artwork for most of your releases, save Garden Ruin, is back as the cover artist. Why?
Because I missed him, and he’s a really good friend. He’s like the fifth Beatle for us, a silent partner. He’s got an interesting take on the direction of our band. I give him some music, I give him lyrics and we’ll talk for about a month straight on the phone, until he starts sending me stuff. We talk about everything, about what’s going on with our own lives, what’s going on with the world both locally and globally. We talk about what we’re into, what some of these songs are about — what he thinks they’re about, what I think they’re about. Where we’ve fucked up in the past. Obstacles of the day, problems at work. We ramble and talk about everything.

I asked him what he did differently with the artwork for [2003’s] Feast of Wire than he did for, say, [1998’s] The Black Light, and he said, “Well, back then, I just spray-painted on a piece of paper.” Feast of Wire was all done internally on a computer. So for [Carried to Dust] he went back to analog. Musically, we were doing the same thing, going back to analog tape and busting out some of the older instruments, just to see what kind of new light can be shone on all of these things. There’s nothing like perspective to give you a new breath of life.

Garden Ruin’s songs were personal responses to specific political currents in the United States. With Carried to Dust’s abstract narrative arc, you’ve stepped away from that. Did you find that more specific style of political writing limiting?
It was important to write that stuff and release that music at the time because we were looking for a different angle. We were looking for something that we could reinvent ourselves with, and we try to constantly challenge ourselves. [Calexico are] a band with so many incredible talents that we can play many different styles of music, and at times it seems like [there are] a limitless amount of avenues we can take. So to hone in on a certain aesthetic and at the same time feel like you’re kind of being misunderstood or maybe written off as maybe one dimensional when there’s more than that — it was good to take a sharp turn.

So where is the band experimenting on this record? On the surface it seems like a return to first principles.
For me, it’s in songs like “House of Valparaiso” and “Victor Jara’s Hands,” which venture away from traditional Western chord progressions and structures. In other parts of the world they hover in one chord for a while, maybe shift to a second chord and then go back, or not. It’s more linear. So loosening up the reins of how we would normally compose, and bringing in some other musicians who I knew would be able to open our minds and our ears to different arrangements and different parts, like our friend Jairo Zavala from Madrid. He’s got this background that extends more to the African and Latin traditions, so on tracks like “House of Valparaiso” and “Fractured Air,” he wound up playing significant parts that helped me take our sound somewhere different.

Does that kind of collaboration become essential for keeping things fresh after 15 years?
It definitely helps.