“It Dawned on Me”
from the album Collisions
2005
iTunes
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Calla inhabit a world of dark, sexy, mysterious guitar noise, with Aurelio Valle murmuring words of desire and despair from inside a burning cloud of electric frazzle. The New York underground trio has built a fanatical following in the past few years, but its fourth album, Collisions, is the breakthrough record where Calla go from a whisper to a scream. The band gets louder and clearer every album, yet without losing the spooky ambience it has refined from ancestors like Love, Echo and the Bunnymen, the Dream Syndicate and My Bloody Valentine. “Stumble” is a truly demented obsessive-love lullaby, with some kind of psychedelic surf-guitar twang over Valle’s lady-killer vocals as he moans, “Hold me close and don’t let me go.” In “Swagger,” “Testify” and “This Better Go as Planned,” they push their sound into the cosmos, guitars ringing out with passion so intense they make other indie bands sound like giggly kids at the prom. Calla prove that emotional savagery can be a beautiful thing.