Artist Interviews

Q&A: Her Name Is Calla

By CMU Editorial | Published on Tuesday 22 March 2011

Yorkshire quintet Her Name Is Calla began releasing material in 2004, putting out several singles and demos which culminated in six-track EP ‘The Heritage’ in 2008. Having already garnered a reputation for sprawling, improvisational live sets, they earned further plaudits with the EP’s brave and unabashed approach to post-rock reinvention.

Emerging last year on German label Denovali Records, debut album ‘The Quiet Lamb’ is a dark and difficult affair, combining rich, orchestral interludes and delicate, folksy arrangements with haunting spells dominated by lead singer Tom Morris’ melancholic lead vocal.

As they prepare to embark on a European tour, which kicks off at the Left Bank in Leeds on 27 Mar, violinist Sophie sheds some light on the album’s creative process with her responses to our Same Six Questions.

Q1 How did you start out making music?
I think we all started quite young – I learnt classical violin, and played in orchestra throughout school and university; Tom had the keys to his school’s music room, and locked himself in to compose all night. As a band, Tom and Mike met first, and the group expanded as they met various people – Adam and myself joined a few years ago, and brought the sound from quite sparse to rather orchestral and epic.

Q2 What inspired your latest album?
A lot of it came from a very personal place. Tom wrote most of the songs after a breakdown, but you can also hear the painful and difficult experiences that we each went through during those years. But that’s also why we’re very proud of the ‘The Quiet Lamb’: there is some darker material on there, but as a whole, it’s about us all coming together and working with each other on every track. We spent a lot of time talking and creating music, which is the nicer side of the past few years together.

Q3 What process do you go through in creating a track?
On ‘The Quiet Lamb’, most of the songs started as quite a skeletal acoustic and vocal take by Tom. Then we might meet up and play through the track as a group, or as was often the case, record our parts separately in our own rooms. Since we all live in different parts of the country, we relied heavily on Dropbox, a program that allows you to drop files into a shared folder. So, for example, I might get one mix of the song with drums, bass and guitar on, and record my violin parts. Then I would upload my violin parts to the band, and it would get mixed in. Every day, we could hear a new version, or talk about our parts – whether that melody was a good idea, would those vocals work there, etc…

Q4 Which artists influence your work?
We don’t have any direct influences, or try to make songs sound like a particular artist. We also have pretty different tastes to each other! Some artists we like right now are Rebekka Karijord, John Grant, Volcano, Ennio Morricone, Tchaikovsky, Cat Power, Kate Bush, Shearwater, worriedaboutsatan, The Decemberists, Mew…

Q5 What would you say to someone experiencing your music for the first time?
We always intended ‘The Quiet Lamb’ to be an album that you experience as a whole. Turn down the lights, perhaps have a nice drink by your side, close all social networking programs… There are arcs and themes in the music that are hard to realise in little chunks.

For someone listening to perhaps just one track, like ‘Pour More Oil’, I think the same idea applies. Our music isn’t meant to be background music, and I’d hope it would never feel as such.

Q6 What are your ambitions for your latest album, and for the future?
We would like to continue to perform ‘The Quiet Lamb’ to new audiences, and to have more people discover the songs that shaped such a huge part of our lives. But we are always trying to challenge ourselves, and have already recorded some new (quite different!) songs for a new seven-inch single, due out around April.

MORE>> www.hernameiscalla.com