Días Felices

No wonder artists and dreamers gravitate to the American south-west in search of landscapes, inspiration and spirit-reviving experiences. For all that a political frontier – and soon, quite possibly, a wall – slices through it, this is a region that belongs to Mexican mestizo traditions, to the desert and the blue sky. Acoustic trio Lone Piñon, from New Mexico, play local genres such as chotes, huapangos and polkas on violin, accordion and guitarrón, among other instruments, harmonising in Nahuatl, English and Spanish.

Where the band Calexico give the canyons and scrubby wastes a soundtrack akin to a gothic Western, Días Felices is gentler, folksier and altogether more celebratory. The bouncier reels have an almost Scottish quality, while one song in Nahuatl seems to stretch back to the ancient sounds of the Andes. The underlying melancholy in the vocals and the lilting melodies remain utterly Mexican. It would be good to know more about the back-story, but the liner notes are meagre. Still, this is a sweet, spirited offering to a troubled borderland.