BELLA734CD
Release Date: 25 May 2018
Ari Roar – moniker of Texan singer-songwriter Caleb Campbell– sees the release of his debut album, Calm Down, which is out now on Bella Union!
With intuitive powers of clarity and concision to the fore, Calm Down is an album that draws on 1960s pop and modern DIY heroes for a set of lovingly languid, lo-fi miniatures. Depths of detail and lived experience bustle beneath effortlessly melodic surfaces; sure signs of a writer in confident command of his pitch.
With a tight run-time of 28 minutes and few of its 15 songs breaching the two-minute mark, Calm Down is not an album that overstates its case. ‘Called In’ merges the influences of garage-pop and Grandaddy in its plaintive plea to “stay alert”, while the brightly summery ‘Windowsill’ and literal shaggy-dog tale ‘Lost and Found’ show an easy lightness of narrative touch and mood control.
Elsewhere, Ari makes weightless work of variously playful, psychedelic material, navigating his songs with expressive ease even when he’s documenting difficulties navigating high-school hallways on ‘Don’t Have a Fit’. ‘Off and On’ is luminous, ‘Implode’sweetly chugging. ‘Sock Drawer’ recounts an inner voyage with a gently psychedelic touch, before the playful strut of ‘Choke’ and buoyant release of ‘Lucky One’ offer precision-judged notes of climactic uplift.