Liverpool Sound and Vision * * * *
You may never have stepped into a boxing ring, you might find that pugilism is something you shy away from or even actively discourage your offspring from taking up as a sport but unless you have strapped on a pair of gloves and looked into your opponent’s eyes as the bell rings, then perhaps you will not recognise the pummelling that you are about to receive, and with thanks, from newcomers, Calva Louise.
The punches land and the senses reel, and you cannot but help ask for more and come they do, the pounding of the riot of this young band, handy with their lyrics, dexterous with their athletic propositions of music. The landed punch digs deep into how we understand the effect of neglect caused on this generation, it is gathering strength and Calva Louise are at the forefront of the anger and groove, they are the Rhinoceros rampaging against the effete waste of hunters of the young, and they should be seen as unstoppable.
Punk never went away, it just lost the majority of its fans when the impetus seemed to fizzle out; what remained, what has countered the resolute of the notion of normality and stiff back collars since has been clever, intelligent, a sparking and crackle of the intellectual with wit and it has flourished. Calva Louise take the ideal of Scuzz-Punk, and with the band’s ancestry adding a flavour of absolute charm to the sound recorded, there is nothing that can stop the listener from smiling as each punch lands with the power fitting of the album’s title, Rhinoceros.
Across tracks such as I’m Gonna Do Well, Outrageous, Getting Closer, Wondertale, the excellent Cruel Girl and Down The Stream, Calva Louise’s energy is infectious, rapid and direct, it is the effort of the piece which makes it suddenly intimate, which gives it the strength in which the youth of today view the world, not as a nihilistic graveyard in which Generation X inherited from those who saw the 60s revolution as a frightening prospect, but as an opportunity to put things right, to make the sacrifice of anger worthwhile.
A riveting exposure to a great band, Rhinoceros is instantly worth preserving.
Calva Louise’s Rhinoceros is out now via Modern Sky Records.
Ian D. Hall