OTR: Calla - Strength In Numbers

[illusionofjoy]

It has been almost two months shy of two years since I typed up an entry for my "Off The Rack" exercise (in self-flagellation). Excuses? Oh, I have plenty, the most inane of which being that my music collection had been packed away for the majority of this time. First it was packed in a stack of white boxes for the majority of the time I lived in what I now derisively refer to as "the flop house." When I did unpack the albums, I never could find enough peace to sit down and listen to something all of the way through, much less write about it. They all ended up packed in the same white boxes again as I beat a hasty egress from that place to a new dwelling.

Things are different now. For one thing, I won’t be moving again anytime soon...

The last time I wrote about Calla, I fully expected that Strength In Numbers would be the next album I would be writing about. Instead, I went and bought CDs by Blur and The Big Pink, knocking me backwards in the alphabet. Seeing as that messes me up, I’m altering the "rules" of OTR so that while it remains an effort to listen to and write about everything in my music collection, CDs purchased after I have made it past their artists alphabetically may be exempted. If I have to keep jumping back and forth throughout my collection, I’m going to end up driving myself insane.

So, as to Calla’s Strength In Numbers - I recall that I purchased it (along with Collisions, Televise and Calla at a concert where they opened for Interpol. I also recall them being better than Interpol. Not that the latter band was bad live, but Calla were certainly more powerful.

I’ve discovered something about the songs on this disc: they don’t run through your head, however, it is not like they are unremarkable and easily forgotten. On the contrary, while you think you may have forgotten them something entirely different has happened. These songs have burrowed into my subconscious, quietly waiting to be rediscovered. As I listen to this disc, it’s not so much like hearing something new as it is like rediscovered an old friend with whom one has not conversed in a while. "Oh, I remember that," one might exclaim to the other as certain subjects are parsed and prodded. I find the experience rather comforting.

The band haven’t released any studio albums since Strength In Numbers. It’s on to a new musician when I get the urge to write "Off The Rack" again...