Her Name is Calla Interview

These are exciting times for Her Name is Calla. Having spent six or so years making music together, they have reached a stage precious few bands attain, where their music is so utterly unique and so magically enriching that you marvel at the fact that mere human beings should be capable of creating such a thing. It’s a very good time for the band to be releasing their debut album then, and we recently caught up with Tom from the band for a bit of a natter about it.

For the benefit of those of us who enjoy being able to neatly categorise their record collection, the first thing we want clearing up is the thorny issue of whether forthcoming record The Quiet Lamb is their debut, or whether that would be 2008’s The Heritage? “I consider The Quiet Lamb our second album but some of the other guys don't and acknowledge it as our first. We're an unnecessarily complicated bunch of people, sorry. The difference for me would be how the record works as a cohesive whole, which I feel both albums do. That said, you could also consider that we intended The Quiet Lamb to be a full album, and so may have approached it differently from the start. That might not be true of The Heritage”.

So clearly, the band’s opinions differ on the semantics. They do, however, show an entirely united front on the much more important issues surrounding the creation of the music. The thoughtful sound of The Quiet Lamb was borne out of a determination not to hurry things, but although this approach has yielded an astonishing piece of music, it wasn’t without the odd wobble: “I always knew the album would be finished and released as it's a hugely important piece of work for us. We wouldn't have just let it fall by the wayside. But our promise to ourselves was that we wouldn't rush it and that we'd get it as close to perfect as we could. Obviously, the moment we sent it to Denovali for pressing we totally shit ourselves and found there were things that we wanted to change, but sometimes it's important to just let go. We recognised that we'd completed the album to the best of our abilities in quite difficult circumstances. For sure there were a few moments along the way where things seemed really bleak and unending. We scrapped the entire album recordings about four or five times, I think.”

To make life even trickier, the current economic climate means that a harsh reality of life for any musicians who aren’t selling out arenas is the ongoing problem of earning enough money to simply keep going, something Tom has recently highlighted in the band’s blog. Something that can’t help matters is the emergence of a culture in which people view it as their right to help themselves to music for free: “I think it's a disappointment. I don't have much money at all, but when I'm able to buy a record it makes it all that more special. I don't download music illegally. What's the point? I'd be a contradiction. It affects us hugely. Some folks think that it is only an issue for big bands but if anything it's the other way around. It's harder for the smaller bands or the bands that are just breaking out to a bigger audience. We give plenty of music away for free and there are plenty of tracks from the new album that are available to stream. Ultimately, downloading the album via illegal means does directly damage us as well as our label. I think it should be our choice to make it available for free download or not. That's something we chose for our first album and and EP we released earlier in the year.”

Given Tom’s feelings towards the pleasures of the physical specimen of a record, it’s no surprise that the presentation of their music is important to the band, resulting in the wooden box special edition of The Quiet Lamb: “We didn't put all this effort into making an album so that iTunes and MySpace could compress the living fuck out of it. I buy my music and there are people out there who do the same, so this album is for them, the folks who like to feel a record in their hands, smell it and leaf their way through a beautiful booklet of artwork whilst the record plays.”

From an entirely musical standpoint, although The Heritage was an extremely impressive piece of work, The Quiet Lamb feels like a big step up for the band, not just in terms of running time, but in terms of its scale, and an all-pervading sense of grandeur about the thing. With regard to how the two records sit together, Tom recognises more differences than similarities: “Both albums are fairly autobiographical. There are parts which are total creation, but those parts are far and few between. Mostly it documents the relationship with my ex-wife, the shit I put her through. There are certain punishments that I expect. If the album sounds personal it's because it is. The Heritage was more about the past and the future and what we'll leave behind. The Quiet Lamb is very much present tense. I'm happier with The Quiet Lamb. It's the first album where we worked together as a full band. It feels more complete and I'm happier with the arrangements and production. Even though both albums were just recorded in our houses, with the new album we were just a bit more experienced and found a better way of working.”

Although they are now freed from the recording environment, Tom expects the band to be no less busy over the next twelve months: “We'll do a few tours, and we are already in the initial stages of a new record that we'd like to release next year if all works out. We've also recorded a collaborative album with our friends The Monroe Transfer. That should come out early next year; it's just being mixed at the moment. There are all sorts of side projects and things going on as well.” So if for any reason the seventy-five minute masterpiece of The Quiet Lamb doesn’t slake your thirst for all things Calla, there’s plenty more music on the horizon. Can’t wait...

Ou Est le Swimming Pool - The Golden Year (Album)

When their singer Charlie Haddon died on August 20^th this year, it meant that the release of the debut album by Ou Est Le Swimming Pool would pale almost entirely into insignificance. The story of the end of Charlie’s life is an awful one, and there is nothing I can add to it that you haven’t read already. While it would be completely crass for me to talk about The Golden Year without acknowledging the tragedy which preceded it, it would be equally wrong to discuss the album exclusively in the context of Charlie’s death. Chances are that if you’re reading this, then you know the background, and you’re probably here to get an idea of what the album sounds like.

For the most part, The Golden Year sees Ou Est Le Swimming Pool building on the reputation which their previous singles built for them as doyens of punchy synth pop. The album houses a good five or six instances where the band completely and utterly hit their mark from a pop point of view, snaring you with a catchy chorus or insistent synth line and refusing to let go. ‘Dance the Way I Feel’ and ‘Jackson’s Last Stand’, in particular, provide the sort of devastatingly effective thrill out of seemingly simplistic ingredients which so many bands strive for, but which few achieve as completely as this.

When you’ve hit on a successful formula for pop perfection, there’s always a danger of overdoing it, and laying it on too thick with the hooks which has the inevitable impact of diluting their effectiveness. This is a pitfall which Ou Est Le Swimming Pool sidestep here, because The Golden Year isn’t played out entirely at full speed, with the pop stompers broken up with the odd slowie. While the more downbeat moments like ‘Our Lives’ don’t necessarily show the band playing their strongest hand, they are useful in saving The Golden Year from overwhelming you with boisterousness (aka The Passion Pit effect).

In spite of anyone’s best efforts to separate The Golden Year apart from its background, it was always likely that there would be one or two moments where its context would result in moments more poignant than the band probably intended them to be. ‘Better’s occasional dark sentiments, although masked by an upbeat melody, make for pretty difficult listening: “The quiet walls are more help than a friend could be”. A similar effect is created by the waves of delicate hope which open up the album on ‘You Started’, particularly its “You have started the beginning of my life” refrain.

Whether or not The Golden Year will prove to be the only album Ou Est Le Swimming Pool ever release is, at the time of writing, unclear, and is something which is a private decision for the band’s remaining members to make in their own good time. Clearly, if they do continue it will be with an entirely different dynamic to that which produced this record, a dynamic which at once shows the finely honed instincts the band possessed even at this early stage, as well as highlighting the potential they had for the future. Hopefully the strength of the album means that this is what Charlie Haddon will be remembered for, rather than the manner of his death.

7/10

Her Name is Calla - The Quiet Lamb (Album)

The five years since Her Name is Calla’s first recordings have been punctuated by a steady stream of releases, but The Quiet Lamb represents their debut album (they apparently consider 2008’s The Heritage a mini album). Clearly they are not a band to be unduly rushed into anything, and they have recently pointed out the efforts they have made to ensure that the record is as perfect as it could be. This is quite a refreshing approach, really. You only get to make one debut album, and the age of accelerated consumption in which we live means that a band who are pressured into rushing out something half-cooked might never get a chance to rectify the situation.

The unhurried philosophy to producing the album is something which can be clearly discerned on listening, because it sounds painstakingly considered. It is an approach which fits Her Name is Calla’s sound perfectly, and the result is that The Quiet Lamb sounds utterly majestic. Like The Heritage before it, it is far from an easy listen, and its seventy plus minutes are splashed with far more dark shades than light ones, but it is a hugely well-executed piece of work. The attention to detail which has gone into it is clear from its sequencing. The album flows wonderfully, right from the portentous openings of Moss Giant, into the desolate, moody A Blood Promise, through to Pour More Oil which sees the emotion which has built up finally being vented. There are times on the album where you find one song has drifted into another without you even noticing the transition, such is its smoothness and completeness.

One of the most impressive things about The Quiet Lamb is its diversity, which adds breadth to its grandeur, but never takes away any of its coherence. The combination of wintry beauty and bombast is underpinned by occasional departures in tone like the funereal folk of Homecoming, or the closing trio of The Union, which veers from triumphal otherworldly brilliance, to ambient beauty, to some kind of insane soundtrack to a sunset horseback pursuit. The album’s undoubted centre piece though is Condor and River, a gorgeous mini-epic which feels like the album in microcosm, building entirely at its own pace from placid beginnings into something so luxurious that seventeen minutes wash by in an instant.

With The Quiet Lamb, Her Name is Calla have managed to simultaneously build on their previous work and open up new doors. One of the key components in how good they are is the fact that they sound like no other band, a genuinely unique proposition who keep adding more and more components to their sound. Their decision to take things at their own pace has been entirely vindicated, because the album is a wonderful slow-burning success. Even if it takes another five years for them to follow up, it’s okay, because there’s plenty here to sustain us in the interim.

Feature - The NARC. Issue 55 Mixtape

The first of a new regular feature in NARC., a 10 track Spotify Mixtape

http://open.spotify.com/user/browno2/playlist/1pTxezMllmTs441dO3TOaa

Vessels – An Idle Brain and the Devil’s Workshop (Errors Remix) – A reworking which sees Errors deconstruct the wandering grandeur of the original, and replace it with a far more playful, glitchy aesthetic.

Trouble Books – Houseplants – Trouble Books are one of the USA’s best kept secrets. Here, they infuse the most minimal of musical elements with an abundance of space to create something beautifully fragile and affecting.

Emmy the Great – Canopies and Drapes – An offcut from Emmy’s impressive debut record which later emerged on the extended version. She namechecks The Magnetic Fields, S Club 7 and KD Lang among others on a lovely folk workout.

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Higher Than the Stars (Saint-Etienne Remix) – The EP from last year’s biggest word of blog successes was arguably as good as their debut record, and this remix adds a new air of dreaminess to their sunny C86-isms.

Elliott Smith – Son of Sam – While his sparser work is his most lauded, on Figure 8, Elliott showed that a fuller sound didn’t strip his songs of their emotion. Opening song Son of Sam is an undoubted highlight.

Her Name is Calla – Nylon – Her Name is Calla are one of our most interesting, creative bands, and Nylon illustrates their darker side, building slowly and menacingly to a histrionic crescendo.

Everything Everything – Photoshop Handsome – Any band hyped to fuck like Everything Everything will be met with suspicion, but the infectious bounce of Photoshop Handsome illustrates why they are worth (most of) the hyperbole.

Los Campesinos! – The Sea is a Good Place to Think of the Future – 2010 saw Los Campesinos! apparently outgrow their twee pop origins. This is the apex of the new LC’s achievements, at once euphoric, despairing and thoroughly enriching.

Asobi Seksu – Thursday – Taken from 2006’s Citrus, Thursday is the perfect blend of Asobi Seksu’s twin strengths, Yuki Chikudate’s gorgeous vocals, and the sometimes overpowering tumult of guitars.

Sonic Youth – The Diamond Sea – Clocking in at just under 20 minutes, this is Sonic Youth’s most decadent work, but also the most liberated they have ever sounded, as Thurston’s weary vocal gives way to 20 minutes of exquisitely meandering noise.

Manic Street Preachers - Postcards From a Young Man (Album)

A little over a year ago, when on these very pages I covered Journal For Plague Lovers, an album which saw Manic Street Preachers triumphantly rugby-tackling their personal history, I pondered whether 2009 would be a fitting time for their unfeasibly epic story to end. At the time, my logic seemed fairly sound. The act of bringing the last of Richey’s abandoned words into public consciousness after fourteen years had an undeniable air of finality to it, leaving the band with something of an unenviable dilemma as to how they would follow up such an album. But of course I’m forgetting that the Manics have always been contrary bastards who have spent more than twenty years being perfectly happy to do exactly the opposite of what you might expect. Therefore, the release of Postcards From a Young Man sees them emerging from the shadow of Richey’s ghost for a second time, and in exactly the same manner as they did in 1996, with an album which is brazen in its radio-conquering ambitions. The circumstances surrounding the two records, however, are entirely different. Where Everything Must Go displayed a defiant sense of optimism borne out of tragedy, wrapping it up in bombast and saturating it with strings, Postcards From a Young Man finds a band at an altogether more settled stage in their lives, crucially no longer needing to escape from their history. In spite of the clear differences surrounding their inception though, both records share the same sense of rejuvenation, a feeling that the band are no longer weighed down by the burden of expectation, and able to make a record just for the enjoyment of it.

In a recent press missive, James described the album as “one last shot at mass communication”, and, regardless of how tongue in cheek his sentiments may be, it’s easy to see what he means. Postcards can most definitely be considered a pop album in the sense that it is unmistakably front-loaded, and that it contains three or four absolutely killer singles which stand head and shoulders above much of the rest of it. Following on from the archetypal lead-single stylings of opening track ‘(It’s Not War) Just the End of Love’ is the album’s title track, which amounts to the most perfect distillation yet of what the band have been trying to achieve musically and lyrically for nigh on fifteen years, as Nicky laments the sting of seeing your youth drift away (“This life, it sucks your principles away”) while James engulfs his words in swooning, sweeping guitar. Even grander is the Ian McCulloch duet ‘Some Kind of Nothingness’. The song is enormous in scale, coming across like some Spector/Walker Brothers hybrid on which McCulloch’s magnificently jaded delivery is supported by an uncharacteristically benevolent-sounding vocal from James. Towards the end the whole thing swells to improbable levels of grandeur when the gospel choirs kick in, to such an extent that it really should all be too much, but the song is so gorgeous that it is impossible not to get caught up in its waves of joyous sadness.

Its first three songs are Postcards From a Young Man’s undoubted high points, before it begins to settle in a little, but every now and again it revisits the stateliness of its beginnings. ‘Hazelton Avenue’, for instance, sees an unlikely ode to the simple pleasures of consumerism (would anyone have seen that coming in 1992?) wrapped in an elegant, swirling refrain, while ‘Golden Platitudes’ comes off like a more grandiose version of the MOR pop of Lifeblood, with the massively uplifting musical accompaniment offsetting a song tinged with the sadness of being betrayed by your own political party (and possibly also by your own failing ideals): “What happened to those days when everything seemed possible... Where did the feeling go? Where did it all go wrong?”

Although they are clearly its most recognisable and memorable facets, the happy/sad big guitar pop numbers don’t quite tell the full story of Postcards. There are also occasional blasts of the characteristic anger which clearly still lingers in the 40-something version of Manic Street Preachers, aimed at targets both old (The decline of national industry, and with it, national identity) and new (Wire’s distaste for the blogger culture which means that anybody with a keyboard can now dispense the same kind of bile which he has spent years honing, to the point that “the printed world is all done and dusted”.) Truth be told though, for all that the angrier songs are bracing, with the rattling chorus of ‘A Billion Balconies Facing the Sun’ a standout example, they are ultimately a little bit throwaway, and at times feel just a little bit redundant. Not quite to the same extent as the likes of ‘Underdogs’ on Send Away the Tigers, mind you, but still they never quite seem to rise above the status of being decent rock knockabouts.

Really, Postcards From a Young Man can not be considered to be a logical follow-on from its predecessor. In spite of the relatively short period of time between the two, the parallels are fleeting, and only the paranoid, tetchy ‘Auto-Intoxication’ would come close to fitting comfortably on Journal For Plague Lovers. We only really see one direct reference to the emotional impact of creating Journal, but it is a telling one when on ‘The Descent (Pages 1 and 2)’, James sings “I’ve lost my last defence / The pages that you left”. Finally committing the last of Richey’s words to wax has left the band exposed, and without the safety buffer they have enjoyed all these years, which might explain the gusto and defiance with which they have attacked this project. While they have undoubtedly recorded better albums than this, they have also recorded much worse too, and there are moments on here which prove they can still genuinely surprise even me, a hardened Manics fan of some thirteen-odd years, with their passion and skill. The long and short of it is that Postcards From a Young Man is a microcosm of the band’s career, rich in glorious successes, pitted with the occasional mis-step, often contradictory, but ultimately completely life-affirming.

Grammatics - Brudenell Social Club, Leeds - 20/8/2010 (Gig)

About a month back, and seemingly out of the blue to the majority of us, Grammatics announced their intention to split, citing insurmountable financial woes as the primary cause. I have watched their latter days with interest, both as a fan of the band, and also as someone intrigued by the machinations of the music industry. They have fallen back on online resources to repay their debts by selling off band paraphernalia, merchandise and little exclusive treats like access to rehearsal time and gigs in people’s gardens. While it has been disagreeable to see a band having to resort to flogging off parts of their history, it’s also encouraging that these days they would have the means to be able to do this to break even, and it has also allowed them to draw a neat line under their story with a final tour and a farewell EP.

Tonight sees the very last leg of their send-off, the last ever Grammatics gig which takes place (of course) in their hometown, and features (of course) two locally-based support acts. Opening band These Monsters are gloriously chaotic, battering the shit out of their instruments, themselves, and our ears. Their songs are messy, unkempt, but thrillingly energetic, and they seem to raise the Brudenell’s temperature to sweltering levels which don’t diminish for the rest of the evening. After the frenetic implosion of These Monsters’ set, there is a sea change in tone when Blue Roses steps onto the stage. There is an endearing sense of awkwardness around her between song chat, which belies the extraordinary, spellbinding voice upon which her music hinges. There is a clear debt of gratitude owed to Joanna Newsom, but it’s difficult to quibble when the songs are so beautifully presented.

By the time Grammatics emerge onstage it is pushing eleven o’clock and there isn’t a soul in the room not drenched in a not-altogether pleasant cocktail of their own and someone else’s sweat. There is also a strange feeling in the tangy air, a mix of anticipation and sadness that this is the very last time that this band will play together. Indeed, one girl at the bar feels the need to tell me about how much she is going to cry tonight, and enquires whether I will experience the same response. Now I’m a bit too stoic a boy for all that (and, to be fair, probably not as drunk as my interlocutor), but as the band commence with the stuttering, swooning The Shadow Committee, there is no denying that it does feel a little emotional.

As the show progresses, the sense that this is their last one ever begins to dissipate (for a while at least), and the gig settles in to feel almost like any other. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, because it means that both we and they can relax a little and enjoy the night without it taking on a funereal air. The band themselves might not be particularly chatty, understandably, but they are in wonderful form. In typical Grammatics fashion, the songs are full, polished and deliciously melodramatic. It feels like a wise move when they drop album closer Swansong into the middle of the set as opposed to ending proceedings with it, because as far as choosing a song to permanently end Grammatics as a live band goes, this would probably be a little too on the nose.

The main set finishes with Double Negative, a song accurately described by Owen as ‘the whitest hiphop ever’, and it is here that the fun ends, and the sweet sting of finality begins to take hold. Having primed us with a particularly fraught version of one of their most overwrought songs, Broken Wing, to open the encore, the band’s finale is a massive, throat-shredding Relentless Fours. It is brutal, cathartic and downright fucking beautiful, concluding with one final, tumultuous descent. And then that is it. Grammatics are no more.

Magic Kids - Memphis (Album)

It’s probably inevitable, but a bit gloomy nonetheless, that as I’ve edged further into my twenties, and as I begin to lurch ever more rapidly towards their conclusion, my tolerance for anything even remotely youthful has waned significantly. This presents something of a quandary when it comes to attempting to critically appraise Memphis the debut album by Magic Kids because youthfulness is something which positively oozes out of every pore of the record. I must soldier on, though, because it really isn’t their fault that I’m seethingly envious that they retain the lustre which deserted me long ago, and who knows, maybe a little vicarious burst of vitality will do me some good.

One thing which will become abundantly clear from even the most cursory of listens to Memphis is that this is a record which nakedly displays its influences. The spectre of 60s pop hangs heavy in the air, with the Beach Boys being the most blatant of reference points. This is immediately evident on opening song ‘Phone’ which gleefully raids Brian Wilson’s box of tricks, pulling out some of his best harmonies along with his well-thumbed juxtaposition of the headrush and yearnings of young love. The Beach Boys influence goes on to pop its head above the parapet sporadically throughout the rest of the record, and is supplemented by occasional bursts of Spector’s girl bands (‘Hey Boy’), and glimpses of a perkier version of baroque pop (‘Superball’).

While Magic Kids’ magpie-like tendencies are pretty barefaced, more often than not they get away with it because they pilfer more than just a sound from their idols; they also display the faultless attention to detail of classic pop music, meaning that the hero-worship never really grates. It might all feel a little lightweight, but there’s no question that the songs are gorgeously well-crafted, making the intricate appear simple, something which is underlined by a straightforward, unfussy production which makes the album feel quite timeless, regardless of the fact that its roots are planted firmly in the 1960s.

Clearly Memphis is a summer record. This could, of course, present a bit of a potential problem for those of us dwelling in parts of the world where summer is but a myth. Fortunately, though, it is an album which doesn’t need a supportive environment, because it is bold enough and evocative enough to create a sunny climate entirely on its own. It is rich in things which make it easy to like, but undoubtedly, the most agreeable thing about it is the seemingly endless surge of happiness on which it is carried, which is so infectious and authentic that even a prematurely aged curmudgeon like me can do little to avoid being swept along with the tide. You probably wouldn’t expect Magic Kids to realistically be able to make more than two or three records with this blueprint, but frankly that isn’t something for us to think about right now. All that really matters for now is that their debut album is an unqualified success, a concise and perfectly-presented collection of first-class pop music.

8/10