As the year rolls to conclusion the task of picking the end of year ‘best ofs’ becomes increasingly daunting. Do you go with the major players, Arcade Fire or Radiohead? If so, how do you possibly compare these artists with work as divergent as that of Akron/Family or Animal Collective, or the slew of great folk-rock albums from Devendra Barnhart and Bright Eyes?

Like many, I obsess over such lists. The year’s early records are dragged out and revisited; back-to-back playing ensues and even after dedicated list-forming sessions I still find the top 10 is more malleable than I would like – determined too much by mood.

Rare are those times when something universally stands out as being a clear cut favourite. Rarer still is an early in the year performance capable of sustaining the imagination, and beating out more recent contenders, for end of year honours. But, even with two months left in 2007 and a crackling of pre-Christmas festivals and side-shows on the horizon, I feel comfortable stating Calexico’s 4th of March performance at The Corner Hotel as the best live performance I witnessed in 2007.

After a decade of playing their particular blend of alt-country, Calexico have grown into a live beast, their show able to fully captivate and command from the opening notes to the climax of the last encore. Where many acts consider the live arena a simple in-person run through of the current album with a few hits or oddities thrown in for spice, live, Calexico manoeuvre above, around and through such conventions, reworking their own songs, performing covers and extended jam sessions as an essential part of the performance. The difference between these ‘in-person’, note-for-note bands and the versatility and experimentation of Calexico is the proverbial chalk-and-cheese of live music – one offers limp repetition, the other an indispensable experience.

“I suppose playing together for many years helps the live show, we've been touring fairly consistently for a while now and love hitting the road, travelling, and meeting other musicians,” says Joey Burns, the band’s guitarist and singer/songwriter. “This helps with the making of new tunes and music for us as well. We also meet musicians who we sometimes plan recordings with, like right now we are making an album with Spanish singer Amparo Sanchez,” says Burns.

While pairing Sanchez with Calexico’s Latin-infused rhythms and rustic instrumentation seems like a perfect musical union, the band’s 2005 In the Reins EP with Sam Beam’s Iron + Wine is regarded by many as the group’s ultimate collaborative effort. After the critical and commercial success of this EP, Burns’ recently returned to work with Beam on his recent LP The Shepherds’ Dog. “Recording with Sam is a real pleasure. We mostly hung out at his home way out of town in Austin TX, just kicking back with instruments and going off on musical tangents. He has a lot of great arrangement and rhythmic ideas that burst when playing live with other musicians. I think he enjoyed having waves of different musicians come out to the house and interact,” Burns said.

The resulting The Shepherd’s Dog is another worthy candidate for the end of year best ofs, and perhaps more importantly it defiantly challenges the preconceptions of Beam as a softly-sung folk artist, something aided by Burns’ guitar playing and the record’s more adventurous instrumentation and rhythms. Listening to Beam’s jump from the whisper-quiet acoustic pickings of Our Endless Numbered Days to the layered and dynamic The Shepherd’s Dog it is hard to not credit Burns’ participation and the In the Reins sessions as playing an important factor in Beam’s artistic growth.

For fans of Calexico in collaborative mode, there is another treat in store with the upcoming release of the Dylan tribute album, which accompanies the Todd Haynes’ Dylan film I’m Not There. “We were approached by the film music supervisor, Randall Poster who we worked with in 2000 on the film Collateral. He wanted us to cover ‘Goin' to Acapulco’ with Will Oldham, but it ended being with Jim James of My Morning Jacket,” Burns tells. “For the tribute, so far, we are performing the following: ‘Señor’ with Joe Henry, ‘Long Black Coat’ with Mark Lanegan, ‘Goin' to Acapulco’ with James and ‘You Aint Goin' Nowhere’ with Glen Hansard. It should be fun. I am trying to get David Mansfield to come out and play pedal steel/violin/mandolin, [he] was on the original Rolling Thunder Revue tour with Dylan.”

What did Burns and the band think of the movie? “The script that Todd and Oren wrote is all based on Dylan's lyrics and interviews. They are the only film ever to get all access to the material for use in a feature film by Dylan's camp. Once we read the script, which is really good, we started inquiring about backing other musicians and it all came together fairly naturally and quickly. Randall was fairly in charge on the choice of material and was there at the film shoot when John Convertino, Jim James and I appeared in a scene performing the song we recorded together.”

Playing with the diversity of musicians that Calexico have encountered it is perhaps no surprise that the band’s live show centres around, and hinges upon, their reinterpretations of not only other people’s songs, but their own as well. The absolute highlight of the band’s Corner Hotel performance was a staggering, psychedelic delivery of ‘Not Even Stevie Nicks…’ that transformed the three-minutes-and-under album version from Feast of Wire into a searing, guitar-led freak-out, the song’s melody twisting and squirming almost unrecognisable somewhere underneath. For Burns’ these sorts of reinterpretations are natural: “I think a lot of live bands take pleasure in departing from the album versions, no? It comes with the territory. Travelling away from the norm, forgetting how the songs were played in the studio and as a band coming up with new arrangements along the way. This is one of the joys of touring.”

Does this process of playing and reworking older material re-evoke the emotions/context of when the songs were written? “Songs definitely change as we change,” Burns said. “That is one of the great things about the medium. While a song like ‘Sunken Waltz’ has pretty much remained true to the album arrangement, a song like ‘Not Even Stevie Nicks…’ has become a doorway to experimenting and drawing out the improvisational aspects.”

Calexico’s choice of cover songs is equally varied making their frequent appearance in the band’s set list another reason for their live excellence. Playing anything from Love’s classic ‘Alone Again or’ to Arcade Fire’s ‘Oceans of Noise’, Calexico have that rare ability to capture the essence of the original performance while still stamping their own footprint on the material. Burns tells us the process of picking the songs can arise from any situation: “Joe Plummer of Black Heart Procession/Modest Mouse suggested the ‘Alone Again Or’ cover. We were on tour together at The Black Cat in Washington DC and he pointed the song out on the jukebox – It fit pretty good from the start. Arcade Fire called us up when we were on tour in Canada and asked if our trumpet players could stop by to record. At that time we suggested doing a version of ‘Ocean of Noise’ with local Tucson players.”

Having toured extensively throughout 2007, Burns and Calexico are now focused on a follow up to 2006’s Garden Ruin: “We've started working on songs at Wavelab Studios in Tuscon and I have many cassette tapes of sketches. I think this will be less static sounding of an album, the fidelity will be mixed. I still love the sound of lo-fi cassette recordings.” While Burns’ seems to have a vision for the production of the recording (“I think John and I will mix this album with Craig Schumacher of Wavelab as opposed to going somewhere new”), he is unsure of whether the new recordings will continue the more guitar-orientated approach of Garden Ruin: “Things always change. It is hard to say exactly what will happen”. Burns’ attitude a fitting summary of the anything-is-possible attitude that makes Calexico such a stunning live show and enables them to so seamlessly back an assortment of musicians.

With a year of suitcase living stored in his songwriting vault and armed with a plethora of musical sketches, Burns’ is about to embark on his own end of year journey – the experiences of touring and the collaborations of 2007 being processed and carved into a new Calexico record in 2008. And while Burns’ may be right that we cannot say “exactly what will happen”, there’s a fair chance that, come next year, this new output will cause more headaches for those trying to perfect their end of year best ofs.