Calla

Calla's 2001 album Scavengers was rife with highly atmospheric music and speculative lyrics. The band itself and guitarist Aurelio Valle's songwriting were clearly maturing: After a few years of delivering obscure tracks, Calla had compiled some crafty and intelligent pop tunes for that disc. The band formed in Texas in the mid-Nineties, and in 1997 a mutable roster of bandmates moved to the Big Apple to begin work with some of that city's great bands, including Bowery Electric and Windsor for Derby, two groups that, like Calla, do not turn a deaf ear to any sound available. The influence of the Lone Star State is instantly recognizable in the band's guitar work, especially on 2005's Collisions, an album too grown up to be labeled Texas twang; still, it makes feet shuffle. But after nearly a decade of riffing on platitudes (on Collisions: "As far as I know/Let it go/Cuz it's never quite what it seems"), Calla's best performance is in the future.