Calories - Basic Nature
- Written by Greg Salter
Fittingly for a band known for brevity when it comes to their songs, Birmingham trio Calories’ second full length is already upon us, just over a year after debut Adventuring. Despite the relatively short gap between releases, Basic Nature is an assured step forward, taking in many of the varied prevailing strands of the UK’s independent music scene at the moment. It’s also a record that manages to retain the band’s own sense of identity, with their impassioned vocals and powerful melodies that seem to come, simultaneously, from pop and hardcore sensibilities.
Basic Nature stumbles into life with a brief intro of distorted drums before falling straight into the desperate ‘You Can Be Honest’ – it’s a 1:49 emotional sucker punch, with its cries of “Twenty five year! Twenty five years!”, that recalls Jawbreaker and even Rites of Spring. Similarly, ‘FFWD’ doesn’t let up, with its tangled, pogo-ready bassline and sing/shout-a-long chorus, and still maintains a sense of melancholia that permeates throughout the record, even when it’s at its most frantic. As if to underline that Calories know their way around their pedals as well as a melody, ‘Orchard Girls’ brings the noise and the pop, as well as an initially hidden slice of lyrical regret.
If Calories bring new ideas to their shorter, sharper songs, then they also demonstrate their ability to look up and out, resisting the temptation to produce a record of the same tricks turned over and over again. ‘Habitations’ is a Sonic Youth style epic condensed into less than four minutes, tearing between noise and ambience when the temptation would have usually been to draw things out – the result is refreshing, though it can be easy to miss on the first few listens. The acoustic guitar also comes out for a couple of tracks – there’s ‘The Offer’ and the understated ‘Altitude Sickness’ – which act as breathers and give Basic Nature more depth.
The subtler and more surprising moments add power to the more straight-ahead ‘Mortal Boys’, where Cap’n Jazz’s influence looms large, or the post-break up kiss-off of ‘Even Stephens’. ‘Let’s Pretend That We’re Older’, meanwhile, revisits the nostalgia and doubt of ‘FFWD’ – it’s a mood and outlook that suits them well, suggesting that Calories have found their sound, at least for the time being, since the more wide-eyed Adventuring.
Bar the short ‘New Cross’, ‘The Brink’ closes out Basic Nature in epic style, stretching to nearly seven minutes. Fittingly, it encapsulates the sounds and themes they’ve drawn on already – reaching from early hardcore and emo, through 90s alt rock and no wave experimentation. Even when their songs are at their most drawn out, it feels as if Calories have trimmed off any excess and the instrumental final passage feels like a fitting end to the frantic, conflicted 32 and a half minutes of music. They sound like they’re just hitting their stride.