Sitting in a pitch black smoking room upstairs in Richard's on Richards, the group known as Calla seemed at home. With faces hidden, it was me on trial instead of them. With critics taking notice of their emotionally tense sounds, New York's Calla are readying themselves for the spotlight. At least one can assume they are with sophisticated lyrics such as these from Arial - My time may come soon enough/I know I said I would talk/Notice I'm in silence/What if I'm not quick enough? Waiting to open the night for British rockers Cooper Temple Clause, Calla have been given some lofty compliments lately, being called "America's answer to The Bends era Radiohead." When bringing that up with them it's easy to see singer Aurelio Valle would rather shy away from comparisons than to explain them. "Oh god…um…god… It's a way people want to describe the music. I wouldn't say Radiohead's an influence or anything, but I think that we probably have a lot of the same influences, probably listen to a lot of the same music and we're both rock bands that sometimes use samplers and electronics and I think that's probably the comparison." Deciding to generalize the comment a bit, Valle is quick to add, "The Bends was a god era for music so I guess we would take it as a compliment."

Along with singer/guitarist Valle, the rest of Calla comprises of Wayne B. Magruder (drums), (bassist/keyboardist) Sean Donovan, and new addition (guitarist) Peter Gannon. After releasing their self titled debut in 1999 they followed up with 2001's Scavengers. Since then they have taken part in Custom: The Remix Album that had them join forces with The Walkmen. "We've known those guys for a while, when we first moved to New York we met those guys and they were still Jonathon Fire Eater and when Trouble Man approached them to do a split single with them, [Walkmen guitarist] Paul [Maroon] basically just called and asked if we'd be interested. We figured 'yeah we're between records so it might be good to throw something down'. "Don't Hold Your Breath" was a really early version; it kind of developed a bit more when we recorded it for the record. It was an interesting thing to do."

With 2002's Televise, Calla has taken advantage of technology in the studio. "The songs will start out with a scratch version, really short verse chorus of the song and then we'll come together and start playing and adding things and the samples will come afterwards. It changes, it evolves every time," Valle told us. "Every record's been different. The first record just came from just piecing together a bunch of ideas, everybody just working individually and passing music around until it just kind of came together. The second record, we were a little more developed as a live band so we started playing more straight up tracks in the studio and started piecing it together that way, like we'd record half a track live and do the rest of it at home. The third record, with every record, once we start touring songs just develop better and it's just basically trying to capture what we do live. Now a lot of the songs are coming together, this particular tour, we're trying a lot of new stuff that we'll start recording once we get home; we rarely used to work that way."

With Calla moving more and more into the spotlight with "Televise," their New York status has come after a transition from Texas and reformation of the band. Valle has no regrets moving from what became a rock'n'roll hot bed with the breakout of bands such At The Drive In and Trail of Dead, to the mother of all music scenes, Brooklyn. "First of all there's a lot of live shows you can go see, there were clubs like The Cooler and Tonic with great live shows. In Texas you couldn't see things like Thurston Moore with K G Highmore. It just seemed like a more interesting place to just evolve as a band and be inspired. There were always bands that were coming out of Texas that were doing well. We just found it wasn't appropriate to be there anymore, we weren't inspired by it anymore, we felt like our feet were stuck in the mud. We needed to move somewhere where the pace was a bit faster and was more excess and more to soak up."

With the stigma of the New York music scene hitting an all time high right now, Calla doesn't feel the need to grab a hold of one sound and stick to it. "There's not really a scene for what we're doing, the best thing about right now is that there's so many scenes going on, like with The Walkmen and The Boggs and all kinds of things that don't really make sense together but are all happening in the same place."

"Everything we do seems to be left field from what our surroundings are, we were always asked why we weren't part of the New York scene while the scene was happening, but other people seem to disagree. With every scene it will eventually end and the best bands will stick around and we'll just see who those bands are. I'm not saying it's a contest or anything because I think some of the best bands are coming out of New York right now and they've all been friends of ours for a long time so it's great to be involved."

Valle has come to the realization that his band will not be the biggest sensation in the world. They will never be in an I-pod commercial. He seems fine with that. "We've gotten great press, it's not really an issue, but when you see places like England flipping out over certain bands and putting them on the cover of NME every week, I'm not going to lie, it can be a bit frustrating but our music tends to not necessarily slap someone in the face immediately. It takes time to listen to it and hopefully have a little patience with it and hopefully over time people will come around. I think there are a lot of bands doing interesting things like Grandaddy and Clinic, The Rapture, but they're not from New York. I love Mars Volta, bands that are trying to do something different, push the envelope; those are bands we like and kind of get lumped into."

Elsewhere

By Jack Libby
Photos : Andy Scheffler
Published : May 21, 2004.