Jonquil :: "Mexico" [Fort Romeau's Graceland edit]

Jonquil came late to the world music meets indie rock party. Arriving after Vampire Weekend, after Local Natives, even after Lord Huron and so many others, the band's tropical pop could quite reasonably have been lost in the collective shuffle of post-Graceland bands. Unless, of course, the band wrote songs with barbed hooks and choruses that skittered around like a runaway piece of ice on your kitchen floor. "Mexico," a song described by at least one close friend of mine as, "so close to being terrible while still being awesome," has here been reimagined by Fort Romeau with the winking Paul Simon reference, "Graceland edit." The warm horns come on in waves, the original song deconstructed and then built piece by tactile piece: First, thumping kick drum and a flirty high hat, then bongos, and, finally, horn punches cribbed right out of "Boy In The Bubble" notebook. Then the deconstruction begins anew, Fort Romeau stripping the arrangement down to its studs and building it again, the sort of creative destruction that make people imagine lasers in the jungle or distant constellations dying the corner of the sky.