Thanks for the update. It hadn't occurred to me that the "warning" was nothing, I guess it'd be a bug in Excel::Table -- it isn't calling the log4perl->init {or easy_init()} What attracted me to Excel::Table is that it does exactly what I want: turns workshets into arrays. I'll investigate Spreadsheet::XLSX. Thanks!
If you need a unified API that works for xls, xlsx, csv, sxc, and ods, check out Spreadsheet::Read, which uses Spreadsheet::ParseXLSX under the hood for the hard work.
I cannot stress this enough: Spreadsheet::XLSX is dead. It is no more. It ceased to exist. It rests in peace.