Her Name is Calla

Her name is Calla are a three-piece band spread across Manchester, Leicester and York. Described as one of the UK’s “most daring, unconventional bands” (Drownedinsound.com), their emotional symphonic sound has gained them a reputation as both skilled developers of tone and dynamic and a set of ferociously intense live performers.

The physical distance between the members led to experimentation with recording space: their debut record, The Quiet Lamb, forced Her name is Calla to utilise any place available, from tiny, cramped bedrooms, to windy and exposed industrial estates. The trombone was played in a hallway, with a mic hanging from a lampshade overhead; guitar and vocals took place whilst nursing a young child, and the violin was captured in the claustrophobic fifteen inches between a bed and a computer.

After a year of piecing together hundreds of recordings – every single take of the many instruments shared between the band using online file sharing – Her name is Calla finally presented The Quiet Lamb. The challenge posed by both its extensive length (at 80 minutes, the album is a mountainous climb of dynamic and varied style) and the personal exploration of isolation, illness and uncertainty, created a record that was a difficult and arresting listen.

But, in a climax as euphoric as many of the band’s instrumental passages, the critical – and fan lead – reception to the album was hugely positive, praising The Quiet Lamb as ‘rare and beautiful’ (The Sun) and ‘awe-inspiring and terrifying’ (This is Fake DIY).

The band followed this release with an EP, Maw – a set of three tracks that sees the group deftly handle three very different genres. It opens with the title track, and the immediate fury of a rock song, followed by the shuffling ache of acoustic track, The Beat That My Heart Skipped. It concludes with Dreamlands, a return to the longer conceptual form for which Her name is Calla is renowned. Its form mirrors The Quiet Lamb in many ways: an autobiographical tale of existing in an unfamiliar world, expertly demonstrated by both tender simplicity and the dizzying gathering of instruments.