The Cales love each other and they want you to know. “We’re pretty close. We tell each other we love each other all the time and mean it,” says bassist and vocalist Maggie Yokley. The four members of the up-and-coming Richmond rock act are all lying sprawled out with each other across lead singer and guitarist Jordan Chu’s twin mattress, chain smoking cigarettes and opening up about their music, their politics, and their debut record.
"A few years ago Jordan and I were living together, and we became really militant with each other about being sincere,” says guitarist Brennan Chambre of the group’s upfront attitudes in their music and personal lives. "It was when we discovered the whole new sincerity thing with Daniel Johnston from the 80’s. I think the militancy has gone down a little bit, but it’s still there." The Cales, comprised of Chu, Yokley, Chambre, and drummer Julius Delacroix, have been making waves lately in the Richmond music scene with their hooky and heartfelt blend of melodic post punk that has gained them comparisons to acts like Guided by Voices and most frequently, the Pixies. “We love the Pixies, but it’s already been said, so it’s like, what do you got after that?” says Chu when asked about the group’s take on their most continually cited musical influence, “It’s like when people say bands are influenced by Nirvana. There’s probably not a single band around today that wasn’t influenced by them in some way.” “Except the Nervous Ticks,” adds Delacroix wryly, referencing one of the river cities wildest punk acts, who often perform with the recent wave of young Cobain acolytes that have finally come into their own around the city and across the country. “They’re like the anti-Nirvana.”
The groundwork for the group that would become The Cales was laid when the band’s principal writers and guitarists Jordan Chu and Brennan Chambre met as freshmen at VCU in 2009. “I didn’t listen to half the music I listen to until I met Brennan,” says Chu of the effect the friendship between the two musicians has had on his personal and artistic trajectory. “We had wanted to sound like Beat Happening when we first started,” says Chambre. After a series of false starts and half-formed bands, Chambre left town and Chu’s artistic eye turned towards the community around him.
“I wasn't playing music in front of people in Richmond, just kind of keeping it to myself. Then one day my friend told me I should come to this show and see this band with her, and it was Heavy Midgets,” says Chu, “I was like, whoa, there’s bands that I like in Richmond. And that was kind of the thing when I saw Tungs for the first time too. I was blown away. It made me realize that there were like minded people in Richmond, and that I wanted to play.”
Chu’s renewed interest in performing music coincidentally occurred during the coalescence of a lot of young local talent around the now departed bar and venue Cellar Door, where acts like Navi and Wolf//Goat were making a name for themselves in the city. “I think a lot of people and musicians who didn't know each other came together through there,” says Chu. "That’s how I met Julius." This fateful meeting would give birth to The Cales.
Julius Delacroix was playing drums for the folk rock act Wolf//Goat when he met Chu. At the time, the group was building serious momentum in the local scene. However, they were simultaneously falling apart. “I think the first time we played music together was after a Wolf//Goat practice at their space in south side,” says Chu. “From then on, I was just jamming with Julius all the time. And then Brennan came back to town.”
The group’s final piece came together as the result of a chance meeting between Delacroix and future bassist Maggie Yokley at a local coffee shop. “I had seen Wolf//Goat recently and I had just moved to Richmond. We started talking and I mentioned that I played bass, and Julius invited me to come practice with his band he was getting together,” Yokley says. “That was pretty serendipitous. That was the first time I had met Julius, and I’d never even met Brennan before our first practice.”
Within a few weeks the group was hitting it off personally and musically as they began to form the rough beginnings of The Cales’ sound. “We really didn’t talk about influences that much initially.” Says Chu, “And we still don’t consciously talk about what we want our songs to be like, but we know what a Cales song is when we start writing it.” The group took shape around the vibrant surf and punk-influenced experimentation that emerged from the group’s disparate influences. Maggie Yokley expounds upon the group’s far flung musical roots. “Stylistically, we all come from really different backgrounds. I know Jordan and I listened to a lot of hip hop and rap growing up, and Julius--”
“I listened to weird shit,” says Delacroix.
“You listened to really weird shit.”
“I listened to really weird shit like Mariah Carey.”
With the lineup fully formed and the beginnings of their sound taking shape at each practice, the newly named Cales began to fall in with the growing scene of experimental rock acts in Richmond. The bands in this crowd were drawing from the noisy post punk of the 1980’s and unflinchingly showing their pop influences, all at the same time. “We sort of fell in with this group of bands that were already playing, and it feels right and it sounds right," says Yokley.
After playing their first shows with fellow up and coming rockers Roseanne, The Cales met Bad Grrrl Records founder/producer Ben Miller through the band Heavy Midgets and soon began talking about recording their debut record. “I think it’s going to be pretty obvious here in the next few months that Ben’s been recording everybody that’s new in the scene," says Chu. "He’s just one of those guys who’s like an archivist of the local scene and is really prolific in his output.”
Slasher Rock is an impressive release of surf rock riffing and well crafted songwriting that shows the Cales in all their melodic and jumbled glory. From the doo-wop meets punk trot of the opening title track, to the feedback and noise laden instrumental “Nervous in NYC,” it’s clear from the beginning of the EP that the Cales are a band that is going to keep the listener on their toes, never falling into a structural formula or singular style for too long.
The Cales are a group that wears their beliefs and politics on their sleeves, and on their record they didn’t shy away from speaking their minds. On the rollicking and dark track “Adorno Porno,” The Cales take on the corporate controlled capitalist police state with a deceptively catchy song that dissolves into enraged group screams of the word “fascist.” Meanwhile, a mangled and melting guitar rendition of the national anthem is dragged over a bed of drum and bass destruction. “All of our songs are about love and classism,” says Chu. “A lot of the music that is political is music that I don’t really like. So I want to make music that is political that I like. Everything is political for me, so I want to give people the option to not hear folk punk, but still be inspired.”
The Cales don’t shy away from paying deference to punk rock’s musical roots either, like on the downtempo rock and roll ballad “Sad Song,” which pairs Jordan Chu’s slurred croon with Maggie Yokley’s affecting harmonies. “I listen to so much music from other periods, especially things that are proto-rock and roll like the blues, and I really like thinking about music in that format,” says Chu, “I think anything that’s separated from its history is going be poor music.”
“That’s the problem with a lot of music today, even in hip hop with the decline of sampling; there’s less of a traditional awareness,” adds Chambre.
“It even goes that way with scenes. It’s like every cool band is moving from their hometown to this specific city where it’s supposed to be sick, but they get there and there’s no context," Chu continues. "I think the best thing about our scene is that we have context--we all know each other, we've seen each other a million times, and we support each other and buy each other’s tapes. There’s something to that, even though the music we make is different from each other, we still influence each other and it’s really important in our sound as a city.”
The Cales aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. Having found their niche and scene in RVA, they plan to work on new material for a follow-up recording that will see Brennan Chambre and Maggie Yokley taking on additional songwriting duties, as well as singing lead vocals. “I love this city,” says Yokley, “Richmond is such an amazing town for music because you can be in bands here and you actually can get shows here, and everyone I know is a musician because you can be successful here in your own way.” “Rent’s cheap,” adds Chu.
Delacroix smiles as he takes a long drag from his cigarette. “Cigarettes are cheap too.”