Caligula's HorseBrisbane masters Caligula's Horse are set to step into pretty rarefied territory when they release their fourth album In Contact, at least for Australian heavy, progressive and alternative acts. Only a select few bands in that scene get all the way to a fourth album, and even fewer have improved with each and every release up to that point, but the mighty C-Horse have achieved both.
In Contact sees the band reaching for the metaphorical stars in a musical sense and building upon an already impressively expansive sound, while at the same time delving more deeply within themselves to create lyrics and imagery of the profoundly conceptual and introspective kind. Guitarist and co-founding member Sam Vallen, speaking from his home on the Gold Coast, has a very slight sense of trepidation that the elaborate and personal nature of the record may possibly divide opinion, especially when listeners compare it to previous album Bloom, but he is ultra-proud of what they have achieved nonetheless.
"It's destined to be a little bit divisive, I think," he says, "with Bloom we had an album that was really immediate, really easy to digest and whatever else, but we went all-in with In Contact. We couldn't be happier with it, it's as complex a work as we've ever dreamt up.
"So I adore it and I'm very interested to see how people respond to it. I'm hoping that people can really sink their teeth into it, and really get into it the way that I would."
While Bloom was a collection of relatively accessible standalone tracks, In Contact is a labyrinthine conceptual piece that may take listeners a little while to wrap their heads around, especially if they choose to explore into the record's overarching theme.
"It's the density of the album," Vallen says when asked to clarify his use of the word 'divisive'. "When it comes to Bloom we had a record that we designed around a bunch of songs that were not connected to one another, they were all different colours, different themes. In Contact is something that's so layered and so big, it has a lot of ideas behind it that, I wouldn't want to say that they're overtly complex, that's not something that we consider our music to be, but they are a little bit more cryptic. It's kind of the nature of a concept album, in the case of In Contact it's a concept album that facilitates a lot of emotional ideas and personal concepts. It might take a little bit more for people to really get into. But I'd hope that it is a little bit more rewarding for that reason."
All that being the case, and while still allowing the individual listener room to interpret the album in their own way and draw their own conclusions, it begs the question of just what the underlying concept of In Contact is, and Vallen is more than happy to give his own perspective on it as its co-creative force.
"The album is basically split into four chapters," Vallen begins, "each of those four chapters is a discussion on a different artist. The fact that they're artists and seek inspiration is really the only thing that ties their stories altogether. Jim (Grey, frontman) conceptualised this as an idea he had at the very beginning of our album discussions. The first dream being a stand-in for the idea of inspiration, something that we all reach for and try to achieve.
"Those four artists are all disconnected when it comes to temporality when it comes to spatiality, there's really no connection between any of them in that context. But they're all trying to find something that makes their art tick, or makes them feel inspired, or makes them overcome the challenges that will get in the way of that art."
Vallen chooses one of the chapters of the work that has particular interest and relevance to himself and his own journey. "The first chapter's called To The Wind," he explains, "and the story is about someone who's an older artist, he's a painter. He's also a recovering alcoholic. The idea is that he's given up drinking and at the same time given up the thing that he would do to throw himself into his art. I know people who have a similar relationship with their drug of choice. In this case, we found it really interesting to discuss the trope of a tortured artist through that concept."
The piece speaks of a much broader issue that Vallen and the band see with the manner in which artists are viewed by society as a whole, an issue they are very unhappy about. "We see someone's mentality instability or their drug use or anything else as something that should be treated like a novelty. If you're an artist, you should be tortured!" He laughs ironically, "It's funny because it's such a common trope, but it's so nasty. What it means is that if an artist doesn't conform with that trope, maybe their art is less meaningful.
"So this guy is feeling the clamouring of an audience demanding another work from him, but he also knows the only way he can create that work to his maximum capacity is by going back to the vice that ruined his life in the first place."
In Vallen's non-musical world, he is also cramming the completion of a PhD into about a seven-month period, so he is very much looking forward to emerging from the truly immersive worlds of that undertaking and the creation of a highly complex Caligula's Horse record, when the band head out on the road for the extensive In Contact Australian tour in late September.
"My day to day life at the moment is that of a hermit, sitting in my office and getting things done," he says. "I don't even think about the enormity of a tour until it's impending. But it's going to be amazing, we've got I Built The Sky, who is a phenomenal guitar player and a really great band, a bunch of other really awesome bands supporting. The venues are a massive step up from last time. I can't wait to get on the road again, it's going to be great."
The album is another massive step forward in this band's fascinating creative evolution and is also very likely to see a further progression in the band's burgeoning profile. Vallen agrees that a band like Caligula's Horse are never going to explode overnight or have huge hit singles on commercial radio, they are more likely to experience slow but steady growth over time, and he actually prefers it that way.
"Probably the biggest spur from the line-graph of our rise was around the time we started working with [record label] Inside Out, who are our extended family over in Europe," he states. "That created a lot of the possibility for what we did soon after that, touring Europe for the first time, doing larger scale tours of Australia and so on.
"We're not a band that's likely to have some breakout hit, and I'm strangely ok with that!"
