XOLO

Hailing from Tucson, Arizona, Brian López and Gabriel Sullivan make up XIXA, a band which sounds like a rocked-up version of Calexico’s borderland vibe with a mix of dark psychedelia, cumbia and other Latin flavours. This, their third album, is named after a sacred, hairless Mexican dog that, in Mayan and Aztec cultures, guides the dead and the living through the underworld, Mictlán. The nine songs of XOLA chronicle the journey of a young girl, Arcoiris, voiced by Mona Chambers, and her cosmic canine protector and spirit guide, El Xolo, through the underworld’s nine levels with a soundtrack to their mythic odyssey that is suitably intense and dynamic. Densely layered and frictional, it’s constantly shifting, from the synth-doom of ‘It Doesn’t Matter’, featuring Modern English’s Robbie Gray and Mick Conroy, to the reverberating ‘Heart Of The World’ with its joyous children’s chorus and acoustic coda as Arcoiris and her spirit guide emerge from the darkness and back into the light.