By the time I got to college, Halloween had become a popular excuse to eat mushrooms. One of the worst times was the year we went to Salem, unknowingly failing every part of the Goth aptitude test that surrounded us. I arrived in the afternoon with a mob, most notably consisting of a coquettish girl I had pined over for years, and her serious boyfriend. We wandered around for hours, avoiding any and all useful communication. Around 3 am, I traded the squalor of half-psychedelic street murmurs, for the cold, achromatic comfort of a jammed highway, wondering if anyone else knew this sort of life-affirming isolation. It's only now, years later, after many records have tickled this anonymous part of the quiet darkness, that I hear the sound of Halloween gone wrong. “Collisions” is that sound.
At first listen, you’ll hear Aurelio Valle's voice for what it is – that of a man bereft of any decent trick-or-treating, wandering the streets in search of life beyond the facile. Valle’s quiet delivery is best exemplified on the album’s first track, “It Dawned On Me.” His affinity for The Church’s Steven Kilbey is obvious, but it’s only the first layer of a unique performance - it actually takes a few listens to discover the song’s true power. Valle somehow manages to pack dynamism into his whisperings, complimenting both the organic movements that shape the melody, and the fervor driving the beat. He is at once excited and asleep, and as if this song wasn’t dreamlike enough, the wordless croons Valle allows himself at the end are like little sonic pillows. Throughout the album, Valle bears his soul through subtle posturing, only ever hinting that he hates his costume.
Lyrically, Calla’s fourth album is a continuation of the damaged world Valle usually sings about. On “Play Dead,” Valle exposes the album’s greatest line, singing “Send your love as an inside joke.” His lyrics are almost always conversational, often sounding as if taken verbatim from a midnight argument. But Valle sounds like he’s actively pursuing detention, with a snide comment here and there, like “So tell me something I don’t know.” He is constantly poking at “you,” commanding, and making a myriad of claims about the past and the future. Some of it’s the kind of stuff I wish I’d said that Halloween.
Although Sean Donovan and Wayne B. Magruder hold the songs together rhythmically, Valle’s guitar work shines brightest throughout the record. More than ever, he has achieved a Bossanova-era, Joey Santiago sound; a tribute to how phenomenal that guitarist’s playing was on The Pixies’ least popular record. Valle finds his own way to arrange Santiago’s odd intervals and his gorgeous California tone. But it’s surf rock via Texas Interstate 10 – more tumbleweeds to hop than waves too hang. Like creepy, chimney eyes in the dark, Valle’s lead rifts peer out at you from these textured songs, not the least bit afraid. On “So Far, So What,” Valle’s acoustic guitar moves merrily along as he assembles feedback that is so layered, it’s difficult to discern where the guitars end and the programming begins.
This isn’t a problem on “So Far, So What,” but the production does become overwhelming at certain points of “Collisions.” The ambient noise on “Pulverized” is beautiful, but there is a lot of it. The samples dominate too much of the space, undermining Valle and Donovan’s stellar performances. The energy on some of these tracks is too unrefined for lots of layered resonance, but it varies from song to song. Sometimes the production needs more space so we can just hear the band play, and sometimes the character of the melody is virtually fathered by this atmosphere. But overall, the production gives most of these songs their eeriness, like the eyes of a jack-o-lantern.
Enough already.
Perhaps my Halloween memories have just ruined your summer day, but I can’t help what I hear, even if it is June. Anyway, the only scary part of this record is when it ends.
* This review was written back in June. |