Calls! is the third album of Norwegian drummer Paal Nilssen-Love Circus, but it was actually recorded before the live recording of Circus’ second album. Turn Thy Loose (PNL, 2025), with legendary Dutch punk rock band The Ex’ guitarists – Andy Moor and Terrie Hessels (who play with Nilssen-Love in the Lean Left quartet with Ken Vandermark) and Arnold de Boer – at Bimhuis club in Amsterdam in February 2025. Calls! Was recorded at Paradiso Studio in Oslo in June 2024, and a day before the performance at Bimhuis, with the Ex Guitars, at Electric Monkey Studio in Amsterdam.
Nilssen-Love devised Circus as a band whose musicians – vocalist Juliana Venter, trumpeter Thomas Johansson, alto sax player and flutist Signe Emmeluth, accordionist Kalle Moberg, and bassist Christian Meaas Svendsen – are free to play any parts of any song at any time. The studio recording of Calls! Called- literally – for a different approach, where the songs were recorded separately and carefully produced.
Calls! Begins with a surprising, chamber and contemplative adaptation of a broken-up excerpt from Norwegian poet and writer Arne Garborg’s epic Haugtussa, with Nilssen-Love on drums, gongs, and piano. But then, Circus resumes its powerful, ecstatic mode with a new version of its seductive alternative hit, «Pussy Pussy Cha Cha», with a slightly different arrangement but with Venter’s commanding delivery (and lyrics), now put in the front, compared to the live recording of Turn Thy Loose, pushed by Nilssen-Lover’s irresistible, infectious pulse, and the mamic rhythms of The Ex guitars. «Calls: Let They Free!», arranged by Moor, and with The Ex Guitars, is a logical follow-up, with its powerful and uplifting rhythmic and danceable drive and its always relevant call for freedom: «resistance is defence».
The jubilant and percussive heavy «Nazaré», by Mestre Barachinha, marks Nilssen-Love’s interest in Brazilian music, and was introduced to him when he experienced the deep Nordeste of Northern Brazil. The happy melody of «Seven Times» is an organic conclusion for the Brazilian piece. The Ex Guitars join one last time for a manic, super-fast and intense adaptation of the Scottish late 1980s punk band Stretchheads, «I Should Be So Lucky», screamed by Venter and de Boer. The following «Slainté», with Venter’s erratic vocal performance (including useful advice about the difference of rhythms in music and in sex), updates the raw and subversive, punkish aesthetics of the Stretchheads.
Calls! Ends with a most beautiful, heartfelt ballad, «Song for Joe», a homage to the legacy of the great Joe McPhee, Nilssen-Love’s long-time comrade, with Venter and Nilssen-Love’s lyrics celebrating McPhee’s free spirit. Venter’s openly emotional delivery, and Nilssen-Love’s powerful drumming, ornamented by the sound of bamboo trees, which were recorded outside the museum of Francisco Brennand in Recife, Brazil. A great conclusion for a great album.
Eyal Hareuveni
Juliana Venter (voice), Thomas Johansson (trumpet), Signe Emmeluth (alto saxophone, flute), Kalle Moberg (accordion), Christian Meaas Svendsen (electric bass, double bass), Paal Nilssen-Love (drums, percussion, Paiste cymbals, piano), Andy Moor (electric guitar), Terrie Hessels (electric guitar), Arnold de Boer (electric guitar, megaphone)
