Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Calla
Label: Beggars Banquet Group
Release: 2007
Rating: 2.5/5
Calla is the Latin genus name for flowering plants known in Slovenian as kačunka. If you steer clear of swamps, their natural habitat, you can find ornamental varieties of these plants at the florist. But Calla is also the name of an indie rock band from New York, and that fact stays undeniable with their new album “Strength In Numbers”. Calla are known for a heavily morbid, mournful ambience, which is basically their main trademark and the thing they’ve been selling their wares with quite successfully.
The copy of the new Calla album that landed in my hands recently (there’s a funny story about its journey through time and space behind that) came generously smeared across the jewel case with leftover food of unknown origin, which I cleaned off, with disgust but also happily and successfully, using (only) water. It finally gets its well-deserved rating on the pages of RockLine.
The new album “Strength In Numbers” marks a shift toward more naturally tinted collages that build up the band’s overall sonic picture. Calla are still seductively hypnotic builders of a layered, psychedelic atmosphere hanging on a rich sonic backdrop, created by blending computer samples and guitar in a search for elemental, clean, half-acoustic sounds. Compared to “Collision” (2005), that makes for an album that’s a bit softer overall, but in places a shade more subtle and emotionally more mature. At times that repetitive hypnotic quality, which the band shows off very clearly in tracks like Stand Paralyzed or the closing Dancers In The Dust, is even comparable to psych indie slackers like The Dandy Warhols. Calla remain masters at building an exceptional ambience, one that, especially when listened to through the right gear (headphones), creates a hugely effective illusory parallel reality that can suck you in within seconds and let you drift off toward the irrational dimensions of a lush imagination. The opener Sanctify is heavier-leaning, with a strong touch of rock intensity, as an album opener should be. Those moments are an rare and endangered species on this record.
You don’t need a PhD to unravel the album’s creations. It all sounds very natural, simple and easy to get into. The guitar likes to use almost laughably simple single-string motifs that might remind you of their New York compatriots Interpol, though in most cases that stays boldly hidden, since Calla keep weaving a rich atmospheric backdrop built on sampling, next to which the guitar “dribbling” is inferior at such moments. At first contact the vocal comes across as confessional, whining and full of self-pity, with a deliberately loose, morning-after-smoking approach to thin singing that takes barely a smidge more energy than the lungs spend on a single in-out breath. Calla manage to find a niche of their own that is very special and appealing, and that vocal approach is one of the band’s main attributes as they explore it. In the dreamy ballad Sleep In Splendour the band’s search for its elemental sound shines through especially brightly, and that search gets further confirmation through the similarly effective lullabies of Rise and then, in the second half of the album, through the run of Malo, Malicious Manner and A Shure Shot. Only Le Gusta el Fuego on “Strength In Numbers”, an album that overall disarms the listener sooner or later with the effect of a sedative, brings a real rock revelation in the second half, one that could have replaced Sanctify in the opening spot.
The one big minus is the overlong running time and too many tracks. The Calla ambience is clearly drawn but stays the same throughout. The song structures also dutifully follow the established Calla template. Together, that makes you get sick of the album pretty quickly, unless you’re a maniac obsessed with soaking up this gloomy, dismal mood the band creates, and with which they come across as so convincingly resigned to fate and wrapped in the funeral veils of eternal mourning. “Strength In Numbers” is a new, fresh, different and more mature album than “Collision”. Just don’t listen to it on a cloudy day, or it might push you toward suicidal tendencies.
Lineup
Aurelio Valle – vocals, guitar, keyboards, sampling
Peter Gannon – bass guitar, guitar, keyboards, sampling
Wayne B. MaGruder – drums, sampling, programming
Production
Calla
Tracklist
1. Sanctify
2. Defences Down
3. Sylvia’s Song
4. Sleep In Splendour
5. Rise
6. Stand Paralyzed
7. Bronson
8. Malo
9. Malicious Manner
10. A Sure Shot
11. La Gusta El Fuego
12. Simone
13. Dancers In The Dust
Album length: 53.13
