1. I Was On The Back Of A Nightingale/ 2. The Roots Run Deep/ 3. It’s Called ‘Daisy’/4. Ragman Roll/ 5. Meridian Arc/ 6. Navigator/ 7. Burial/ 8. A Second Life/ 9. It Was Flood/ 10.Whale Fall: A Journal/ 11. Dreamlands/ 12. Perfect Crime
Function Records,May 2014
As is the case with all the music bands, we need our time with Her Name Is Calla in order to get to know them. Now that they released their third full length album under the title ‘Navigator’, it is becoming more and more clear what they want to express through their music and more importantly how they want to communicate this. If you have ignored this band so far, Navigator is the album that will convince you to reconsider.
This album in terms of performance, has nothing to do with the familiar psychological detachment that characterises most of the young UK bands that are part of similar music genres. Her Name is Calla bring with this album, something from the warmth of American acoustic folk and rock of the 1970s. Navigator’s music, has many reference points and this makes it very interesting to listen. The band, has made big leaps in the direction of lyrical experimentation since their previous album. This album has a significantly richer and exuberant music compared to the two previous albums of the band. The orchestration is done very carefully and in such a way that stresses the sound and melody played by each one of the different instruments even though they have completely different tones (i.e. theremin, bass guitar, violin, synth, cello, banjo, mandolin, piano). In this way the music of ‘Navigator’ tells a very interesting story unlike the previous albums of this band.
An album in two parts. Part 1:
Every time I listen to the first song called ‘I Was On The Back Of A Nightingale’, I perceive it as a combination of ‘In The Dutch Mountains’ by Nits and ‘Karma Police’ by Radiohead. Tom Morris finds his unique performing style in this album. Navigator, continues with interesting and very emotional melodies while the band develops further the experimental element in the music (i.e. ‘It’s Called Daisy’, ‘Navigator’)
…Back out on the road when we were young,
We thought buildings would be named after us…
While this album at times (e.g. ‘The Roots Run Deep’, ‘Ragman Roll’) brings to mind Thom Yorke, the music of Archive and that of Anathema, it remains authentic and unique and not a replica of these bands’ music. ‘Ragman Roll’ is a representation of bitterness in a lyrical form and the official video clip of this song leaves no doubt about this. It’s a song that is performed with the emotional wisdom that comes when somebody fully understands the complexity of sadness and finds a way to express it. The music of this song, encompasses all the tensions that can be found in perpetual sadness about unfair things and taking necessary but unpleasant decisions…Whether you read the lyrics or listen to them being sung, their aim is to make you do some sort of self-criticism for 5’, especially if a part of you is touched by the melodies of the song. The piano raised my heartbeat by playing an almost ‘anxious’ rhythm which changes tonalities while the string instruments simply intensify any the emotional outbreak that is caused by the moving performance of Tom Morris. ‘Meridian Arc’ couldn’t have been a better choice after this song. The only thing I didn’t expect while listening to Navigator, was to think of the first albums of Anathema while listening to it.
As the songs alternated within the album, I kept thinking that this sound reminds me of something else, of another musician playing the guitar ‘almost likewise’ or performing ‘similarly’ or producing ‘these’ feelings through the performance etc. The essence of Navigator lies in the fact that, while, obviously, it is an album inspired by many musicians, at the same time it establishes its position and finds its own character.
The homonymous song ‘Navigator’, up until 3.57, creates connections with the previous albums but after 4’ it changes its rhythm and character and ends after 2 more alternations during the last 2’. If you reduced the volume at the beginning of this song, be prepared to turn it up again around the middle and don’t be surprised if you want to listen to the song again after it finishes.
…I don’t have choices only anger…
‘Burial’ along with the brief and mysterious ‘A Second Life’ should have closed this album as it has an atmosphere of epilogue, with Adam Weikart and Sophie Green providing backing vocals. The music is rich and seems like a song that provides a closing through theremin, banjo and violin. After having listened to this album various times, it has become clear to me that these two songs provided the closing of the first part of the cd. At the same time these two songs introduced to us the other members of the band which have a more prominent role in the vocals of the songs that follow.
Part 2:
Despite having listened to this album several times, the second part of it continues to evade my attention. In terms of performance, the emotional reserves of the band seem to be diminishing. However, the music continues to stress the differences between the instruments in a very good way. The acoustic guitar is more emphasized in this part of the album and offers a very interesting result.
In the following 5 songs before the end, the music becomes emotionally interesting only momentarily. As a result, the sound has a more experimental feel but at the same time it becomes rather ‘unshaped’ as there are a lot of alterations which seem not very well connected (noisy parts come precede or follow lyrical/acoustic parts while singing retains its ethereal character).An interesting moment is the change in rhythm that happens the last 3 minutes of ‘It Was Flood’. ‘Whale Fall: A Journal’ could be probably best suited as part of another album while ‘Dreamlands’ is a lengthy song which lasts almost 12’ and feels like the amalgamation of 4 different songs. From the four in total rhythmical and stylish changes that happen within this song, the most interesting ones are the change after 4’.33’’ which lasts 1.5’ and the last 3’ where the acoustic guitar leads and brings to mind American country music.
Finally one thing has become very apparent with this album and this is that Her Name is Calla really work on their sound, reconsidering and developing parts of it, as a band in a music genre that seems to be almost saturated especially in the UK, a country which creates musicians as easily as it creates and maintains illusions about the quality of each one. Her Name Is Calla aim at producing music worth listening and noticing at a period where most of the new bands follow the trends of either folk, country or post punk revival. This is a band which, even though is aware of these trends, has, very wisely chosen not follow them blindly. Each time that Navigator put me in the mood for listening to Radiohead, Anathema or Archive, the same time it deterred me from doing so. Where the two previous albums didn’t give me a reason to distinguish them among other bands, Navigator gives me every reason to wait impatiently for their next album. Until then, we will enjoy the concert, Her Name Is Calla will give at The Islington on November 23 2014. You can purchase Navigator by visiting this link to the band’s official online shop.
7/10
Blaue Rosen 