Call Me Loretta are a French band, coming from the lovely and sunny Toulouse. Scars, their debut ep, had made clear that they were one of the few French bands worth paying attention to, sticking as close as they could to American models, and avoiding commercial tricks. Honesty and sincerity are good long-term investments (at least i hope so).

The band has been together for quite a while now, and with time they've grown more confident, and have created a trademark sound, Sonic Youth guitars in a minor key, with a bit of Cat Power's disillusion and a bit of Unwound's noisy-pop tricks. 

My favourite song off the album is "High as a Holed Kite." It's a shame that the band didn't print the lyrics in the cd's booklet (they're available on their website) since they are in the same time brutally cold and desperately poetic. "High as a Holed Kite" is a bulldozer, relying on a tight rhythm section, building layers and layers of guitars, and, on top of that, unleashing a viscerally dramatic movie sample. 

Call Me Loretta's songs are bleak, painful reflections of life seen through lucid eyes. Crosswind is not a happy rollercoaster ride, it's a black and white car drive across a decrepit neighborhood.   

"Conversation with Myself" is a 7 minutes epic with a low-key jazzy bridge, in which both singers sing "your ghost is a blight on my life" with tight, haunted voices. The songs ends with a hundred noisy guitars playing the same melody on and on, until the end.

The album finishes with "Coralled Horses," a bare, clear-sighted statement. "You'll be married/ before your middle-aged years." Innocence is nowhere to be found and with this song the band leaves you half-conscious, hit by the weight of Stephanie's sighs. 

As i said a couple lines above, Scars introduced a great band that, in talent and promises, had trouble to find rivals in its own country. Crosswind establishes them as one of the most impressively cohesive and coherent acts today.

-Barbara H

/apr 15th 2004/