Callooh! Callay! has more to be joyous about than slaying a Jabberwock — their new album, “Sasprilluh Champagne,” will release digitally on iTunes and Rhapsody today and locally at Oz Music on Tuesday.
“This album is a real departure from what they’ve done in the past,” said Reed Watson, owner of the record label Hackberry Records. “It blows any notion of ‘local music’ out of the water. This is a record that could be just as well accepted in any place, not just Tuscaloosa.”
The band is from Tuscaloosa and is composed of three members: Adam Morrow on guitar and vocals, Natalie Jenson on bass, keyboard and vocals and Bowen Robertson on drums.
Morrow said that the title and four of the songs on Sasprilluh Champagne are the centerpiece of the album and are based off of William Faulkner and his book The Sound and the Fury.
“I grew up with Faulkner being one of the ultimate writers that I wanted to understand, and The Sound and the Fury just stuck with me,” Morrow said. “It just has this aesthetic that’s really interesting.”
Morrow said the title of the album comes from one of the book’s characters, Benjy Compson.
“Benjy is mentally disabled and mute. He’s at his sister Caddy’s wedding, where he thinks he’s drinking sarsaparilla and it’s really champagne,” He said. “He drinks it and he sees the whole world spin around him. He’s not drunk – he is just totally involved in the world around him.”
The band also said that in those songs they are attempting to take the emotion from Faulkner’s story and transfer it into music form.
“The emotion in the story isn’t Faulkner’s — he’s just tapped into it,” Morrow said.” We wanted to do the same thing by using his stuff.”
Other songs on the album concentrate on issues like the 16th Street Church bombings in Birmingham, relating to other people and trust.
Robertson said that he thinks this album is different from the music they have played in the past because of the change in the way the band has gone about writing the recording the songs.
“Instead of playing one person’s songs as a group, we’re playing songs the whole band has written,” He said. “ We just call it ‘maturing and settling.’”
Watson said that Callooh! Callay! joined Hackberry Records in August 2009. Hackberry Records is also the record label for Sparrow and the Ghost, Elias Patriot, Joshua Folmar and The Motions.
“I remember when they sent the first mix — like anything, I sat in my chair and faced right towards the stereo and I listened to it. It really blew my mind,” He said. “I had heard a lot of the back story on what was going on from Adam, but I didn’t know that it was going to sound the way that it did.”
Watson said that the release of “Sasprilluh Champagne” is affirming because he knows that it is a “cut above the rest.”
“I wanted them on the label, I got them on the label — we all like each other — so it worked,” Watson said. “And this album works. It’s got layers and it’s got depth, and the more you listen to it the more you get into it and the more you understand what’s going on. It’s a very complicated, intense record. It’s ballsy. It’s gutsy.”
Stuart Bond, vocalist and guitarist of the band Sparrow and the Ghost, said that he thinks the record is special.
“It sounds like a pop-centric Fleet Foxes doing Viva La Bam. It’s an electric, epic version on what Callooh! Callay! did before,” Bond said. “It has a story. It builds. It climaxes.”
