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Calla 'Collisions'
Calla’s fourth album, 'Collisions' sees the Texan band attempting to scale the heights of their more successful stateside contemporaries, and very, very nearly succeeding...
Some people are just fated to remain the bridesmaid and never the bride. It’s a thought that must have crossed the minds of Calla as they watched from the sidelines while the likes of Interpol rose with an almost indecent haste to secure the affections of those whose lips would rather face south and if that wasn’t galling enough, surely the success of fellow Texans-relocated-to-New York Secret Machines would have had Calla frothing at the injustice of it all?
Calla’s fourth album, 'Collisions', seeks to rectify that solution as it reaches out to the kind of people who prefer their thrills on the darker shades of grey and the initial signs displayed on the opening of chimes of 'It Dawned On Me' are promising. Anthemic and spacious without sliding into chest-beating braggadocio, it subscribes to the kind of hazy psychedelia that The Dandy Warhols do so well when they can be bothered between industrial-strength blunts. Indeed, singer-guitarist Aurelio Valle shares that same, soporific drawl with Courtney Taylor as well as a pop sensibility that’s carried through on the languid fuzz of 'Initiate'. Guitars fizz and growl with a restrained sense of menace that thankfully refuses to descend into all-out goth despite Valle crooning, “String me up and hang me upside down”.
Sadly, 'This Better Go As Planned', 'Play Dead' and 'Pulverized' finds the band slowing the pace down with a paucity of ideas to match. Flicking the switch to auto-pilot, Calla are more concerned with mood than groove and subsequently offer the kind of background noise that will find favour with heads too far gone to remember what their remote control does rather than capitalising on that altered state of mind.
The second half of the album finds Calla playing the stoner rock/dream-pop game by numbers and even they should have realised that a sequence of single word titles – 'Testify', 'Imbusteros', 'Stumble' et al - points too much to where they’re coming from and less to where they’re going to though Overshadowed does at least flex its muscles in the gradual wig-out stakes even if it has all been done better before by Brian Jonestown Massacre and Spacemen 3.
Despite a truly mouth-watering start, 'Collisions' is an album too much in thrall to the influences that helped shape it. Looks like Calla will be waiting to catch those flowers just a little while longer.
Calla 'Collisions' (Beggars Banquet) Released February 6 2006.
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