Calla
Televise

“But the days of your life shall be days of sorrow, that sorrow which is the most enduring of impressions, as the cypress is the most resilient of trees. The hours of your happiness have passed; joy is not gathered twice in a lifetime, like the roses of Pesto that bloom twice a year.”

(“Morella”, E. A. Poe)

It was back in 2002 when the marvelous and dark jewel called "Televise" was released by Calla, Texans by origin, but emigrated to Brooklyn to be able to give their music an adequate follow-up.

An album that did not disappoint the high expectations held at the time by the specialized press, which had long recognized them as the next big thing of the high-level underground scene on the East Coast, awaiting the conquest of the entire world. The predictions of the insiders were supported and validated by the fact that the American trio had been contacted by names such as Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Sigur Ros, and Godspeed You! Black Emperor with the proposal to have them as opening act on their tours, a flattering circumstance that does not happen to everyone.

In "Televise" Aurelio Valle (voice and guitar), Sean Donovan (bass, keyboards, and programming) and Wayne Magruder (drums and programming) embrace and clutch the listener with a scratchy caress, made of aggressive and sweet sounds, where noise contrasts with delicate silences, and the dissonances of feedback dissolve into atmospheres filled with dark sighs.

Fury and voluptuousness, passion and detachment, nameless emotions nourished by fierce attacks of edgy guitars: all this and much more, offered in a very minimal mood, with songs such as "Strangler", opening the dance of the departed, where Aurelio's languid and sensual voice (the classic beautiful and damned) will immerse you in a state of complacent unhappiness: "See what you've done/I would give anything, anything/Just to see it happen to you/I can get the same effect, if you strangle me". To continue with "Customized", a journey into the ambivalent tangle of human emotions, while "Televised", strange and twisted, hints at a certain blues influence, and constantly teeters between apathy and pathos, a characteristic that serves as a guideline for all the tracks on the album. And again "Monument", tortured love and death song, featuring the ghost of a murdered lover (who knows by whom): "Last night I swore I saw her come to me in a dream/Like a storm forming/Father, will she come again?"

A melancholic and sweet, violent album, suspended in nothingness, with a slow and passionate pace, that will take you to the edge of the abyss and urge you to throw yourself into the void, in free fall: this is, in an extreme synthesis, "Televise". Rock music that reshapes the idea that rock is only about fun and the desire to escape.

Absolutely a must-have!