Tag: Her Name is Calla

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Music Reviews Some Great Stuff I've Heard Recently

I’ve loved all sorts of music in 2019. I’ve not been able to write about as much of it as I would’ve liked – life is quite different in my world to how it was  a few years ago and writing about music has never paid a single bill of mine – but music has given me joy at times this year, comfort at others and often accompanied me in times of stress and pressure. I’ve made quite a long playlist with songs from albums of mine that were particular favourites, but a list longer than 10 albums takes too long to read, so in that vein, here’s my top 10 of the year

Her Name is Calla ‘Animal Choir’

Sadly, this is the final album from the majestic Her Name is Calla. I have no doubt that they’re the best band that most people who claim to like music that falls into lazy categories like Post-Rock, Indie, Alternative and so on have never heard of. They’re truly a great band and this is their best album, a marvellous coda on a fine and, so far, grossly underappreciated career.

Shalosh ‘Onwards and Upwards’

I love me a good piano trio. Shalosh are an exceptional piano trio, particularly if you like your jazz trio’s to have rock leanings too. Which I very much do. So there you go.

Rymden ‘Reflections and Odysseys’

Another jazz trio, this time on the excellent Jazzland Recordings from Scandinavia, this one came as a pleasant surprise to me as I knew nothing about it when I pressed play. Enegetic, playful and muscular. This is high-quality stuff.

Son of Cloud ‘Son of Cloud’

Some albums are quick listens, the kind that you know are good, even excellent, but that don’t stay with you for weeks, months, perhaps even years afterwards. The self-titled album from Son of Cloud isn’t like that. It’s the best singer-songwriter album I heard this year by a million miles. A thing of true beauty and power, with some great songs and a thread of narrative to the album that will stay with you long after you’ve finished listening. More people should know about this album. Many, many more.

Flight Brigade ‘Chased By Wolves’

Indie rock bands who forefront guitars seem to be an endangered species in 2019. I love Flight Brigade because everything about them, their sound and their songs are impeccable and timeless. Their songs stay with you and their show is one of the best you’ll see from a band of any stature in the contemporary scene. Don’t miss them in 2020.

Pedro the Lion ‘Phoenix’

Listen to this, listen to “Quietest Friend” and then come back and tell me that the genius of David Bazan hasn’t grown with the resurrection of his awesome band Pedro the Lion. One of the greatest songwriters of this or any other era, full stop. And when he rocks, it’s extremely satisfying. Oh for a visit to the UK in 2020.

Portico Quartet ‘Memory Streams’

Probably the best live band in the UK right now, this newest record from Portico Quartet is among the most cohesive and potent of their career, even rivalling ‘Isla’ for power and emotion. Some of my favourite moments of this year have been watching them play, too.

Telefon Tel Aviv ‘Dreams Are Not Enough’

I have such a strong connection with the music of TTA. It has been with me through some of the best moments of my life, as well as some of the hardest. To find Josh coming back with the first new album under this name for a very long time this year was a joy tinged with sorrow as to what was lost and a hope that the great music of that past could be matched. I didn’t dream he could surpass the beauty of previuou records, but he pulled it off. A great album.

Hammock ‘Silencia’ and ‘Undercurrents’

Hammock are absolutely at the top of the game as regards ambient music and they only cemented that position and reputation in 2019. Not only did they complete a recent trilogy of albums with the beauty of “Silencia” but they released a monthly series of longer-form pieces named “Undercurrents” throughout the year too. Do seek that one out.

Sugarfoot ‘In the Clearing’

A glorious slice of country rock from Norway to close out the top 10. It will make you smile, no doubts at all.

And to finish things off, here’s the longer playlist:

Have a fantastic Christmas and a great start to 2020.

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Some Great Stuff I've Heard Recently

My Albums of the Year

So, 2014 is drawing to a close. It’s been a year of a lot of change, a lot of new things have happened. I’ve learnt a lot, and realised along the way that I knew a lot less in the first place than I had previously thought. In the midst of all these changes, joys and celebrations, celebration, mourning and downright hard work, I’ve heard some fantastic music. Music is a gift, I think. It never ceases to amaze me that there is a song, or an album for every mood, seemingly every circumstance. I’m writing this list as much for my own sense of posterity as anything – it’ll be nice to look back on this in a while (perhaps years) and see what was exciting me by the end of 2014! I’m not going to be pretentious and write long, florid paeans to each album. If they sound intriguing, take the time to track them down and delve in. I hope that they give you as much joy as they have given me this year. A final caveat, there’s no way I could possibly do this list in order or anything like that, so just assume that I like them all equally! Ok, here goes…

Motorpsycho – Behind the Sun

2014 was the year I discovered vinyl. I know it had been there for a  long time. I was slow on the uptake. It was also the year I discovered the incredible Norwegian band Motorpsycho. This is their 2014 release, but as I began to delve in to their back catalogue there was the glorious realisation that here was a band who defied characterisation and had been making albums since the late 1980’s. Sometimes it’s like Black Sabbath. At other times it’s free jazz. Sometimes 60s pop, other times a cacophonous racket. A staggeringly inventive and individual band. If you do nothing else after reading this, listen to this album.

Royal Blood – Royal Blood

This won’t surprise anyone who knows me. I was fortunate enough to hear about Royal Blood 18 months ago, before their first single was released, and saw them twice, playing to a combined total of about 120 people. I don’t think I’ve ever been more inspired by seeing a band I barely knew anything about than that first time in Leicester. Fortunately their debut album delivers on their promise in spades. It’s crazy to think that they are among the biggest bands in the country now. Can only wait and see what comes next with interest.

Neil Cowley Trio – Touch and Flee

This was a departure for the best live band in the world, a dancehall record. Quite restrained. Full of emotion, but lacking in some of the bombast of previous releases, which really gave Neil’s compositional flair space to shine. I have no idea how they aren’t the biggest band in the world, as I keep saying. If you like music you will like this album. If you don’t like this album you probably should give up listening to music.

Enormodome – Big Boy Machines

The second rock duo on this list. This is a huge sounding, melodically inventive, inspiring listen. This has more of my favourite songs of the year on it than any other album. It sounds so good loud as to be ridiculous. Fantastic work from J Hall and Brad Blackwood on mixing and mastering.

David Bazan and Passenger String Quartet – Volume 1

David Bazan is a world-class songwriter. He is also a world-class quester after truth, willing to question and doubt, and honestly express his feelings and findings at every step. The songs on this album see Bazan’s haunting vocal backed only by a string quartet. in these environs you see just how strong his writing is. He’s a special talent that everyone should know.

Plank! – Hivemind

An instrumental trio traversing the line between indie, rock and electronica, this is a brilliantly joyous record. No-one seems to have heard of them either…

Gavin Clark – Beautiful Skeletons

I’ve been waiting for a new release from Gavin, the voice of Funhouse and Clayhill, for what feels like an eternity, but was actually only about 8 years (I’m impatient). This is a beautifully presented collection of sparse, emotive folk, charting the course of the last 20 years or so of Clark’s songwriting life. Her has one of of those voices. Another one who, if there was any justice in music world, would be a household name.

Early Winters – Vanishing Act

This is a flat-out beautiful album. Carina Round is another one of those singers. Here, her vocals intertwine the equally brilliant Justin Rutledge’s, as they adorn some amazing and effortlessly laid-back songs. Just wonderful.

Ormonde – Cartographer/Explorer

This record has Anna-Lynne Williams on it. That should be enough to send you scurrying out to hear it. If you need more, this is marked departure for her duo with Robert Gomez. More direct, perhaps even aggressive, but still maintaining the wonder and sense of the numinous. Another special album.

Damien Rice – My Favourite Faded Fantasy

A surprise new album from Damien Rice came late in the year. In a sense though, what we got was far from a surprise. Perfectly crafted, full of emotion, twisting and turning. A lovely return.

Dan Wilson – Love Without Fear

The former singer with Semisonic, Dan Wilson writes great songs. They are the kind of songs that make you, were you to find yourself considering yourself to be a songwriter, more than willing to down tools to retirement.

Luke Sital Singh – The Fire Inside

One of the standout performers I saw at Greenbelt this year, Luke’s debut full length has justifiably elevated him to a new level of recognition as one of the best songwriters in this country. Don’t be surprised if he’s everywhere next year. It’s his time.

Her Name is Calla – Navigator

I love Calla. They’ve been in my life a long time. This year they released an astonishingly progressive album, nuanced and full of maturity. Out with noise, in with pastoral folk of the best kind. On with the show. Can’t wait for their next one.

 

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Some Great Stuff I've Heard Recently

Her Name is Calla “Navigator” (2014)

I vividly remember playing a gig at The Social, on Pelham Street in Nottingham, in around 2005. The Social is a cool venue. A lot of bands and artists play it on the way up (and on the way back down again) on the indie rock touring treadmill. For me as a young songwriter it felt pretty important to be playing at a place like that. From my memory, I played early on, played ok, was suitably intense and moody and was lifted off the stage (elegantly) feeling pretty good about myself. Then a guy called Tom, playing under the name Her Name is Calla, got up and played a set of such searing, visceral power that I was spellbound, and firmly put in my place as to the relative merits of our respective live performances. I picked up a demo and wore it out. Calla of old were a post-rock band extraordinaire. They did quiet and loud in all the right places, better than most other bands and yet, through a variety of circumstances, never quite reached the level of acclaim of some of their (in my opinion) lesser contemporaries. Who knows why.

As time has gone on, Tom has released a string of increasingly wonderful solo records under the name T E Morris, filled with heart-on-the-sleeve honesty, and startlingly serious vocals. All the while, Calla has carried on in the background. Condor and River, The Heritage and The Quiet Lamb built them an enviable reputation as a creative and daring studio band and a juggernaut of a  live experience. With The Navigator, the full potential of the band is finally realised.

This is an album which has “intense” written all over it. The Roots Run Deep has Tom crooning “I’m alone in here now and I’m mixed up” over a skittering beat, strident synths and the kind of blips and bleeps which have characterised the work of contemporaries Ghosting Season. It seems to be a song about lost hopes, maybe romantic, maybe musical. What’s clear is that, after the almost pastoral opening of I Was On the Back of  a Nightingale, that this is no standard post-rock album. Morris and his cohorts have stretched themselves, taking in electronica, folk, even some ambient drone-like elements, as on It’s Called Daisy, which leads into the wondrous Ragman Roll.

Elements of the album bring to mind for me the wonderful Josh T Pearson, such as Burial’s “I don’t have choices, only anger” refrain, which you find yourself singing along to, and then wishing that you, and Tom, didn’t wonder if it were actually true. The interplay of vocals, banjos and violin on this track is a particular highlight. another example of how HNiC have taken the post-rock template and built on it in such a way as to entirely stand out from the crowd. This is pastoral post-rock. The kind that might be made if Nick Cave and Nick Drake had had the same parents.

Best of all, when the explosive release does come, as in the coda of the title-track at the album’s midpoint, it is so unexpected and exciting that it feels perfect. That the wall-of-sound is not returned to in the same way throughout the rest of the album is to its credit.

The concluding quartet of It Was Flood, Whale Fall_A Journal, Dreamland and Perfect Prime will, I think, not be bettered by a band of this type this year. Satisfyingly, HNiC do not resort to going out with a bang, instead space is given to beauty and wonder.

This is an album. It is a heavy listen, for sure, but as an exercise in to how to build and pace a whole suite of music in to a coherent whole, it is excellent. This is the kind of music people who are serious about songwriting should listen to. Tom Morris is  a singular talent and deserving of much more recognition than he is currently afforded.

So, a folk post-rock album, which sounds a bit like Radiohead, a bit like Josh T Pearson, a bit like depression, a bit like Bon Iver, and a lot like the kind of cross-over success that Her Name is Calla have deserved for so long. Let’s hope it arrives, so that they don’t have to spend four years making the next album.