Call me “old fashioned” (or just a “dork”), but I’m a sucker for an actual “tour” with an actual name… Nowadays it seems as though artists do short sprints of dates at their convenience (And really, I can’t blame them, as I’m a “starving artist” myself), but it’s become rarer and rarer that an artist is able to conceptualize a live “experience” that, in years to come, will be able to be cited in a single, clever phrase. It’s not necessarily a surprise (but I’m not any less charmed) that critically and popularly renowned Mexican recording artist and actress Ximena Sariñana has done just that. The singing/songwriting chanteuse will bring her “Ain’t Gonna Say No/No Voy A Decir Que No” Tour to our very own World Café Live this Wednesday, July 1st. The tour is named for a track on Sariñana’s No todo lo puedes dar LP, whose deluxe edition hit U.S. shelves this April. The album is Sariñana’s third full-length and boasts the breadth of her abilities; jazz, folk, electronic, and R&B-infused pop is still readily present but, at its best moments, it can also resemble the twee-est output of Belle & Sebastian’s early years or middle-moody Fiona Apple.
And while Ximena Sariñana is still playing relatively intimate stages on her U.S. headlining dates (World Café Live is one of her biggest), she has already made quite a splash among American audiences (She actually currently splits her time between Mexico City and Los Angeles.) Her debut album, Mediocre, was released in 2008 and, in addition to garnering praise from the likes of Rolling Stone and Billboard, even received a Grammy nomination for “Best Latin Rock or Alternative Album.” This success led to her mostly-English-language, self-titled, follow-up LP, which features songs penned by Rancid’s Tim Armstrong, The Bird and the Bee’s Greg Kurstin, and TV on the Radio’s David Sitek (although she’s returned to doing the majority of the writing and producing on her most recent album). Following her current run of solo dates Sariñana will take on support duties for Latin Rock mega-star Juanes on some mega-stages, including Madison Square Garden and Reading, PA’s Santander Arena. Between the fact that Wednesday’s date at World Café Live is selling well and future hyper-prosperous endeavors it would seem as though this might be Philadelphia’s last chance to see Ximena Sariñana in a setting of even relatively intimacy, so it’s not something I would suggest missing.
