Calla -- Classic or Dud?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/radio3_aod.shtml?mixingit

thanks, julio!

I've only heard Calla, but I'm in Yanc3y's corner already. Here are some thoughts I had on it while caught in its grip:

I haven't seen much written about the band, but I know that they're transplanted Texans living in New York, and I understand that their music reflects the tension between those disparate landscapes. That's all clear. That and the Morricone soundtrack over a David Lynch movie featuring a cameo from Tom Waits impersonating Nick Cave. Well, okay, I don't know if anyone else has said that, but it's difficult to get a foothold here. Perhaps that's the point; pop culture footholds and musical reference points are superfluous, just attempts to fill spaces that cannot be filled. The music is everything.

With the opening bone-dry howl of "Tarantula", the thirsty tambourine pony trot, the languid coyote song of the guitar, as it builds and wends and falls away, a serpent death rattle dragging its emptiness behind it, the song is kind of ominous (and yet more organic Texas than New York). "Custom Car Crash" is what invited the Waits comparison, which is too easy, since way more is going on here between the lines, the layers. The vocals are plain creepy with this band, those barely whispered sounds. "June" plays with rhythm in a completely different way, but what I love is the sparking electrical fizzing, the nod to urban technology which could also be bugs on a porch getting zapped, so it's both. For the first time. Empty heat. The desert, a dry organic sweltering place, but the curious emptiness of a large city flagging under a humid summer day, enervated, panting like a half mad dog.

This music scares me, at various points, sometimes at different points on different spins. It seems to tap into feelings I never knew existed.

On "Only Drowning Men", that repeated beat could be hammers-on-wood, or marching boots. And the spaces between all the sounds are incredibly huge (as on most of their songs here), vast as the dark sparkling bowl of sky over the desert's nighttime. Each plucked reverbed string is like a star shimmering. Nothing moves fast here. Bones reflect the moon's white. Melodies take an age to come clear out of the night, emerging like spectral hoodoos. More than once, when voices intrude, they're startling, unexpected. This music sounds like instrumental music, and the hushed near-spoken words spook you when they arrive suddenly at ear height. (The Leonard Cohen sample is driving me crazy -- which song is that from? It's an inexplicably sad sound).

"Elsewhere" is barely there. The hunting horn/passing ship sound like something from a bygone age. Lethargy, ennui, follows. Something squeaky like a weather vane, something hanging from a rusted fence. That heartbreaking guitar sound like the distillation of all frontier Western myth. Then the hair-raising goosebump feedback shrieks like cougars fucking (honest). I still hear more country than town, though, unless the throbbing pulse at the heart is more electric grid than the pulsating flanks of a sick, hounded beast.

"Truth About Robots" is astonishing. The melodic theme reminds me of Cat Power's John Lee Hooker cover on You Are Free ("Crawlin' Black Spider", which would be apt after we've already had a song called "Tarantula"). It doesn't sound a lot like the blues, and yet, in essence, it does. The creepy melancholy of this repeated refrain assaulted by shrieks and howls of guitar feedback is like the unraveling of the secret unpalatable truth at the core of our dissolute urban nightmares. There is both fear and an infinite sadness in steel.

"Trinidad" is plain lulling, like something deadly and mesmerizing. You know that nothing good will come of following its lazy meanders, but you go anyway. Sure enough "Keyes" continues the charade, easing us in softly only to swing the club of its industrial rhythm at our heads. There's that sick Eraserhead feeling again, and the dentist drill whines that come in after a couple of minutes of this busy industry (the workers are faceless) don't help. They almost hurt. Then something breaks like glass or steel, and it's gone. Just gone.

"Awake and Under" is the bad dream that tricks you into thinking you've woken, over and over, a cruel lucid nightmare ("short waves and chemicals," "she walks on water / so tell her father / she's a miracle"). The singer has some bad shit on his mind, something awful, some dangerous love or even more dangerous hate. The guitar chord at the end, hesitant, gorgeous, backed by some kind of treated, processed keyboard sound (another guitar?) is the moment before the terrible deed. The entire album is perhaps the moment before this unspoken occurence, some product of a sidewinder brain baked at noon and dragged half mad into the sweltering hidden alleyways of the city. A sacrifice needing to be made.

Moving in the rain and then discovering that my new flat hadn't been cleaned or painted and the carpet smells like dog was almost completely made up for by finding a Calla cd from someone I don't even know in the mailbox. Rock.

i quite like it, but--i wish there were more songs. i'm a complete sucka for the soft-loud-soft-loud dynamic but i (despite jess and i guess you yanc3y) want more loud. somewhere recently i saw a review of the latest dirty three album that talked about how they were tension upon tension and then no release. i really like how calla sounds, but then i want more of something. i've got dux to their show in DC on June 22, so maybe all will be revealed--but at the moment i'll go with seam for that sort of thing.

anyway--it's fucking awesome to get something like that in the mail. i'd like to return the favor but i'm far too bashful to make a mix for someone who writes for the VV. but if you ever come to DC i'll buy you a beer.

don't feel obligated to give me anything in return, but if there's something you would like me to hear, don't hesitate to send it.

I ran into Aurelio from Calla and Julian from the Strokes on the street last night. We exchanged pleasantries. Kinda odd.

I am shamed. :-( But yes, I wouldn't mind hearing that. And you didn't beat up Julian? FOR SHAME. (I am now convinced that the Strokes' drum machine should go solo.)

gosh,their other albums must be grate! i really like televise,although it was a "slow grower".

D-BLOG

9:54 PM -- WOKE UP, TURNED ON TV

10:11 -- TELEMUNDO MASTURBATION

10:30 -- WATCHED COSBY EPISODE WHERE THEO AND COCKROACH GET CAUGHT CHEATING ON THEIR MATH QUIZ AND MUST HIDE FROM COSBY

10:49 -- ATE BREAKFAST

11:55 -- CALLED JANET (BUSY SIGNAL)

12:05 -- CHECKED ILM, MORE CALUM BULLSHIT

12:30 -- POSTED OWN PICTURE TO THREAD

Calla will be opening for the Cure on a Euro tour later this year!

(...not that CTC were bad -- in fact, they won me over a bit, live at least...)

A short set, no encore, but they were still completely mesmerizing, absolutely absorbing. I'll be writing it up for PopMatters so I won't shoot my wad here, but everything positive said about them on this great thread is true. They are very nice guys, and there isn't a NYC band who can touch them, which may indeed be their downfall. These albums will be resurrected one day by future alien cultural anthropologists, and someone will declare them planetary -- if not galactic -- treasures, who knows?

(Oh, a sad footnote -- the Cure thing looks like it fell through.)

and nick, i am still sending it out. email me if you want one.

Got Scavengers out of the dollar bin and I really like it. Bands that exercise restraint really well are winners.

what happened to these guys?
I only have 'Scavengers'. I always mistake them for Califone.

I don't know, but I haven't listened to that album too often since I posted about it 2 years ago. Nothing against it though.

iirc they got boring

still got some time for the first album, though, it's got that summer night moodiness to it

Couple of them have solo projects out, but when I last looked they raised enough money to go back in the studio to record. There's some soundcloud links, etc. on their Facebook page.

first two albums were classic, after that, eh...

shoulda contended imo

New song!
https://callamusic.bandcamp.com/track/pick-your-battles