Songfacts®:

• Calexico co-founder, drummer John Convertino, co-writes most of the band's tunes but is rarely a lyric contributor. However he provided the words for this intimate track. "'Para' means 'for' in Spanish, but it also means 'stop,' which I thought was really interesting," he explained to the Independent newspaper. "(Singer/guitarist) Joey (Burns) used it as a working title, but the music made me think of Terrence Malick's movie Tree of Life. That really resonated with me, because of the relationship with the father and how incredibly complicated it is to have children and raise a family."
• The band recorded most of the album in the Algiers section of New Orleans, hence the title of the LP. This was the last song they recorded there, and it went through several incarnations along the way. According to Joey Burns, he started writing it as an homage to their friend Lhasa de Sela, a singer who died of cancer in 2010 at age 37. At first, the song was called "Con Todo Palabra," which is Spanish for "with all these words."