By: Dan Salter
Her Name Is Calla | website | facebook | bandcamp |
I’ve been putting off reviewing ‘The Quiet Lamb’, the second album from Leeds five(ish) piece Her Name Is Calla, because frankly it’s been getting so much glowing coverage elsewhere (even The Sun gave it four out of five for God’s sake!), so many beautifully expressed reviews full of florid praise that it’s become a bit intimidating. However, it’s time I confronted my demons, stepped up to the plate and added my two cents worth.
There’s no getting away from it, ‘The Quiet Lamb’ is a magnificent record. It is an example of the album raised to work of high art, an incredible achievement. It contains many counter directional tides; it is lush and full yet bleak and melancholic, it is dreamy and light yet it is dark and powerful, it is all of these things without any of them jarring together. Honestly, it is a masterpiece.
The album opens with a glacial slowness, in fact you’re thirty seconds or so in to ‘Moss Giant’ before one becomes gradually aware of a breathy, almost whale-like noise which is slowly joined by strings and a beautiful piano refrain and then, way off in the distance, the sound of voices but no sooner does the tune grow in to something you can grip hold of it sublimes away again, like smoke through your fingers.
This pattern continues to varying degrees through the next few tracks; ‘A Blood Promise’ again opens with a profound stillness, a gentle guitar and violin float around a forlorn voice until eventually things are raised to a crescendo with the arrival of horns and drums, then things fold back in to themselves again and ebb away, it’s heart wrenching, deeply introspective stuff. From here things flow seamlessly in to ‘Pour More Oil’ almost as if they are two parts of one whole song. This time the pace quickens slightly, more instrumentation is added, cello and horns flesh out the violin parts, and the vocal becomes more strident, more anguished and desperate. This passage genuinely had the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end.
‘Interval 1’ is just that, a brief respite from the metaphysical pain of ‘Pour More Oil’ and the calm before the storm that is the unbelievably epic and incredible ‘Condor And River’.
Sadly, I don’t think I have the vocabulary at my disposal to truly do justice to ‘Condor And River’. It is often said that writing about music is like dancing about architecture, and never more have I felt the truth of that axiom than right at this moment. All I can really say is that seldom have seventeen musical minutes of my life been so enrapturing, so powerfully emotive and just so beautifully expressed. This is worth the price of the record alone, the only way to understand it is to hear it. I implore you to do so.
After that glorious high, the band brings us slowly back to Earth. Gorgeous picked, acoustic guitar on ‘Long Grass’ and the very otherworldly ‘Homecoming’ are moments of fragile beauty before ‘Thief’ again transports the listener back to the realm of dreams and sadness that the first part of the record inhabits.
The third and final movement of this symphony of an album is a triumvirate of tracks that fall under the banner of ‘The Union’, this is, if you will, the Allegro Con Brio finish to the piece. The band abandon the mournful placidity of the early tracks and give full vent to their demons, building from the group sing of ‘I Worship A Golden Sun’ through the feedback ridden sonic squall of ‘The Recidivist’ finally in to the frenzied, wild west fantasy of ‘In To The West’, finishing the album just about as far down the musical spectrum from where it started as it’s possible to get.
With ‘The Quiet Lamb’, Her Name Is Calla have established themselves as a band of enormous depth, ability and vision who really have carved out a unique sound and a place in the musical firmament with very few peers. My only hope is that they are able to sustain this level of output without the emotive turmoil that seethes just below the surface of this record tearing them apart, because if they can then further truly great things can be expected.
