Calva Louise ‘Camino’

The main trick to managing one’s anxiety – or, mine really, given I don’t think I’ve got anybody else’s that periodically pops up from time to time – is the realisation of safety in one’s immediate environment. One of the reasons I couldn’t sleep for the best part of ten years, for example, was ostensibly due to the sense of some sort of danger, which I’m told is an evolutionary mechanism (hence the phrase “sleeping with one eye open”). What typically makes me feel safe is knowing that I can basically exit any given situation at any time (in a not-mortality-related way of course) if shit gets real. Truthfully, my 2020 so far as been probably my most clandestine thus far and has led to a feeling of being trapped in a work-eat-sleep kinda way. It’s easy to justify when it’s all cool shit and (somewhat more justifiably) it helps people I care about. But I haven’t really had as fulfilling social life or indeed much activity at all, given at the points that I’m lucky enough to have some spare time, I opt to rest which I’m told is more important. Some people understand that (they’re called friends and family); other’s don’t. Its a tricky one. Perhaps typing onto this thing again is indicative of a sea change – perfectly timed as the weather becomes progressively not-as-dark as it has been for what’s felt like the longest start to any given year in a while – and as a friend that I haven’t seen in an actual year said to me last night, “to-do lists are cool; priorities are better. You don’t seem to have any less shit on your plate whether you like it or not, so prioritise, punk” (that’s paraphrased, of course. Alex Hudson has not, to my knowledge, called me or anyone else a punk in this sense). This new one from former New Moons alumni Calva Louise seems to warrant priority in this regard. They’ve done spectacularly well since Killing Moon briefly frigged with their lives. From the unbelievably-packed rehearsal rooms at Roundhouse to now booming it up on pretty much every playlist and stage going, they generally personify why, despite the amount I whine about it, this shit needed to get started in the first place. We’ve actually got another New Moons comp out on Monday. I wonder who featuring on it I’ll be describing in a similar fashion in the future, when I eventually get around to and/or prioritise it of course. Catch Calva Louise doing their whole pioneering future garage rock shit across Europe where they’re currently on tour with Highly Suspect (including a UK run of dates in March), then going again across the UK with Strange Bones and Von Bondies respectively in May. Party on dudes.

• Ach x