2019 - UK
Post-Rock, Art Rock
2 years of recordings. 1 hour and 20 minutes, Her Name Is C alla never meant to leave us with a whimper. They are one of those shadow bands, released on Dunk Records without meeting the same success as We Lost The Sea, touring with Cult of Luna, Maybeshewill and Solstafir without being the first act. The post-rock band consisting of the singer Tom Elliot Morris, the mulit-instrumentist Adam Weikert and musicians like Anja Madhvani, Tiernan Welch and Sophie Green released only four studio albums since 2008. Meshing together post-rock with chamber folk and art rock, Her Name Is Calla announced their break up back in 2019, before releasing what was about to become their final album, Animal Choir. It’s a triumph for everything they ever did and everything they won’t ever make together. And even if all this sounds like the description of a climatic magnum opus, Her Name Is Calla never forgets to take it slow, to find elegance within the quiet, so the cathartic installments keep shining even more.
Throughout the entire record, the main strength surrounding the instrumentals is Morris’ falsetto beautifully intensifying the emotional aspect of the album. From the very beginning with Swan, Her Name Is Calla delivers one of their most powerful song ever recorded, followed by The Dead Rift and the final single released years before the album, Kaleidoscoping, a slow and tremendously sad song that ends the introduction. Her Name Is Calla even finds the time to let the door open for experimentations on Bleach, with new electronic sounds coming in to create a new atmosphere agreeably surprising. Then, a new trilogy unfolds, A Modern Vesper, A Moment of Clarity and the ambient A Rush of Blood, three songs quite different in style but always feeling at the right place, never breaking the continuity built by the band. The last part of the album is an entanglement of memorable post-rock songs and slower instrumentals crafting the mood of this final odyssey.
After repeated listenings, the same song always leaves a stronger mark on me. “A parliament of oak and empty gestures / The chain links tattered hanging like a slipknot / A water tower talisman of stillborn / Hopes that crash like stocks into the ground”, this is Vanguard. One of their most audacious song because of how uncanny it sounds, always making you feel like there’s something in the air you don’t quite understand. “I don’t know”, Morris keeps repeating, while the beautiful chords play behind him, turning his words into psalmodic spells. Abstractly recounting sombre moments of Adam Weikert’s life and a book of poems he wrote called USIDOH, this fascinating track carries an unprecedented aura of danger. As far as I can tell, Vanguard is the most spiritual song from Her Name Is Calla, a song in which you can easily drown, your mind slowly departing towards strange places of sacred motives until the final notes overwhelms you.
Inside the vinyl, there’s a quote saying “It was exhilarating, stressful, loving, challenging, crippling, enlightening, terrifying, spiritual, cathartic, confusing, lost, found, exhausting, metamorphic, painful, angry, beautiful.” Each word, and I really mean this. Each word is contained within Animal Choir. The final song, Bloodline, is a straightforward post-rock anthem that instantly feels like the final act of a tempestuous theatre play. “There’s nothing else to say / There’s nothing else to do / This is the part where we change or we fade or we dig even deeper down / I’ll see you in the next life”, these are the last lyrics before the epilogue, The Patterned Room, where melancholy takes over. It was their first emotion, and now it’s their final one, waving farewell after reaching the top of their mountain, where they greeted us with a choir of emotions.
Throughout the entire record, the main strength surrounding the instrumentals is Morris’ falsetto beautifully intensifying the emotional aspect of the album. From the very beginning with Swan, Her Name Is Calla delivers one of their most powerful song ever recorded, followed by The Dead Rift and the final single released years before the album, Kaleidoscoping, a slow and tremendously sad song that ends the introduction. Her Name Is Calla even finds the time to let the door open for experimentations on Bleach, with new electronic sounds coming in to create a new atmosphere agreeably surprising. Then, a new trilogy unfolds, A Modern Vesper, A Moment of Clarity and the ambient A Rush of Blood, three songs quite different in style but always feeling at the right place, never breaking the continuity built by the band. The last part of the album is an entanglement of memorable post-rock songs and slower instrumentals crafting the mood of this final odyssey.
After repeated listenings, the same song always leaves a stronger mark on me. “A parliament of oak and empty gestures / The chain links tattered hanging like a slipknot / A water tower talisman of stillborn / Hopes that crash like stocks into the ground”, this is Vanguard. One of their most audacious song because of how uncanny it sounds, always making you feel like there’s something in the air you don’t quite understand. “I don’t know”, Morris keeps repeating, while the beautiful chords play behind him, turning his words into psalmodic spells. Abstractly recounting sombre moments of Adam Weikert’s life and a book of poems he wrote called USIDOH, this fascinating track carries an unprecedented aura of danger. As far as I can tell, Vanguard is the most spiritual song from Her Name Is Calla, a song in which you can easily drown, your mind slowly departing towards strange places of sacred motives until the final notes overwhelms you.
Inside the vinyl, there’s a quote saying “It was exhilarating, stressful, loving, challenging, crippling, enlightening, terrifying, spiritual, cathartic, confusing, lost, found, exhausting, metamorphic, painful, angry, beautiful.” Each word, and I really mean this. Each word is contained within Animal Choir. The final song, Bloodline, is a straightforward post-rock anthem that instantly feels like the final act of a tempestuous theatre play. “There’s nothing else to say / There’s nothing else to do / This is the part where we change or we fade or we dig even deeper down / I’ll see you in the next life”, these are the last lyrics before the epilogue, The Patterned Room, where melancholy takes over. It was their first emotion, and now it’s their final one, waving farewell after reaching the top of their mountain, where they greeted us with a choir of emotions.