A little too familiar
Every so often an album comes along that makes you say “haven’t I heard this before?” Usually, this is a telling sign of a newer band that’s stuck leaning a bit too heavily on their influences. It’s not quite plagiarism, but it is taking inspiration a little too far. Of all the genres, psych-rock seems to have the biggest problem with this. Perhaps it’s because, at their core, most psych-rock is built upon the same foundation of riffs and middle eastern desert influences, but even still, so many groups fail to break out of the confining mold of desert rock and create something interesting. Trouble and Desire, the latest record by The Callas with Lee Ranaldo, is a perfectly listenable album that finds itself trapped too deeply in the realm of familiarity.
Structurally the record is divided up by (frustratingly) seven tracks all named “Octopus.” Each track has its corresponding number behind it, and they serve as transition points between the longer more psych heavy songs. Interestingly enough, many of the most exciting parts of the records take place in these tracks. They are strange and dreamlike and find themselves breaking from that same psych-rock mold that creatively hampers the rest of the record. In fact, it would be intriguing to hear a record that only contains these tracks; they’re far more menacing than the other portions of the record and they manage to cultivate a strange, exciting atmosphere where the rest of the record falls flat.
Moving onto the meatier tracks, there’s little in the way of substance. Most frustratingly, it’s not because the tracks are weak or sound bad, but rather you’ll be unable to shake the notion that you’ve heard them before. Nothing really jumps out and demands that you hear it, nothing is on this record that you couldn’t hear just as easily on a Myrrors record or any of the infinite, nameless psych-rock bands that make the same music. If any track were to truly differentiate itself from the others it would be “Acid Books” which is a mad romp through psych-rock tropes but manages to throw just enough noise rock and grooviness into it that it manages to stand out.
Trouble and Desire finds itself in a strange place. Sonically the album is torn in half by its fantastic intermission tracks, but the true meat of the record is sun-dried and unremarkable. Were the record to simply be the “Octopus” tracks, it would undoubtedly feel much more masterful and careful in its execution. Sadly as it stands, there is little outside of those tracks that would warrant coming back this album again, and if we’re honest, you’ll hear the same thing when you next by a psych-rock record.
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