Search - Calla :: Calla

Stark and stately

Oliver | Morelia, MICH MEX | 10/15/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Calla is a trio from New York (originally, Texas) that plays a softly hallucinated music reminiscent of Ry Cooder's soundtracks and Red House Painters. Singer Aurelio Valle, "programmers" Wayne Magruder (a former Bowery Electric) and keyboardist Sean Donovan sculpted shadowy melodies that slowly crept out of their fragile envelope. The ambience of Calla (Sub Rosa, 1999 - Arena Rock, 2004) is stark and stately. Its funereal dirges are mostly content of repeating their own spleen. The mood is framed by the Calexico-ain psychedelic drowsiness of the instrumental opener, Tarentula , and amplified by the depressed psychedelia of other instrumentals: Truth About Robots , with its shrieking guitar, June, with its wavering electronic hiss, lazy syncopated drums and pointless guitar doodling, not to mention Keyes, that pares down the concept to a sustained dissonance and distant drums.

Among real "songs", the gentle lullaby Elsewhere is the catchier and warmer, followed by the pseudo-calypso of Trinidad. The semi-tribal, twangy, sleepy Custom Car Crash finds an unlikely compromise between Ennio Morricone and Tom Waits. Only Drowning Men, after a four-minute instrumental overture of sketchy guitar tones and looping electronic patterns, moans a few slow, bluesy lines while the guitar erects a wall of noise a` la Donovan's Hurdy Gurdy Man."