BSH Saturday Music Club: Calico

It’s rare for a new album to come to me and immediately be immediately catapulted well and truly (that is, with staying power) into the upper echelon of my group of favorites. To beat out heaps of nostalgia and sentimentality, it takes a lot. It’s rare, but this is exactly what Ryan Beatty’s Calico was able to do.

I read somewhere that some of the only promotion that was done for this album was a billboard going up somewhere in Los Angeles featuring something of the punch from the opening track “Ribbons” – it’s brave to be nothing to no one at all.

Indeed, this really captures part of the ethos of this album as a whole. The lyrics, while not exactly spare, are direct, precise in their storytelling. We hit something of a sweet spot with this too – this isn’t an album trying to be too conceptually lofty and alienated from the listener, nor is it overly direct and too enamored of its own lore that it’s gesturing towards.

Thematically, we grapple with “[wounds] in the past,” navigating one’s queer identity, questions of love, yearning, but how to stop oneself from overwatering a situation, from pouring too much love into a person. And what if we don’t want to stop ourselves? And what if it doesn’t make a difference either way?

I tend to be a vocals-forward type of listener (as a *dry heaving* retired singer) and this album was a real treat for me, in that regard. This isn’t to say that the other elements of the album are merely set dressing, but it really does largely look to find ways to support and highlight Beatty’s vocals. The instrumentation is well polished but it never overpowers the vocals. Beatty plays with building and layering and then contrast through stripping down these vocals. It’s never overdone, but the variety we get in texture from the harmonies and moments of vocal stacking is lovely, and provides a nice bit of contrast to the moments when the vocals are laid bare.

There are so many moments in this album that blew me away on first listen and continue to blow me away as I revisit it. There’s a lot that’s pretty heart wrenching, but there are plenty of times when quiet moments of contentment shine through. I’m thinking of the initial scene painted in “Andromeda”: “That night, I had a dream you took me dancing, it was 92 degrees at 2 am. Twirling my hair, it’s not everything I wished for, but I didn’t care. I just liked having you there.”

Relationships are fraught and true perfection might just be a mirage, but maybe it’s enough to make our own slivers of it, sitting in these quiet moments with the person we’re desiring.

Joe D : I can’t say Calico was my cup of tea; I blame my internet-addled brain. The production? Clean, and I like Beatty’s harmonies. The vibe? Charming, if a little overwrought. It’s a fine album but, at the end of the day and after several listens, it just didn’t “grab” me–there wasn’t anything for me to return to, where one or two listens felt like I got the full experience and one song kind of got lost in the next. The opening track, “Ribbons,” was my favorite, and in my research for Music Club I found out that Bon Iver–an artist I’m quite fond of–contributed to that song. That adds up, because the whole time I was listening to Calico I thought, “Huh, that could be a Bon Iver harmony,” and lo and behold, he was part of the production! Still, a lot of the pieces are there for Beatty to be great, and I’ll keep an eye out for his next release.

Jason M: There’s not a lot of slick production or thick, busy atmospherics which drown out his vocals. The at times sparse arrangements highlight his pipes which he seems to have in abundance on “Ribbons” and the folksy-tinged “Bruises Off The Peach.” There also doesn’t seem to be much filler here with nine tracks as it sounds fairly consistent throughout. I’m not a huge fan of lush outros like the one on “Andromeda” but the album from start to finish is better than expected. Not falling into the old-school singer-songwriter field, Calico is not exactly in my wheelhouse but it’s a nice piece of work, particularly “Bright Red” and the prog-ish “Hunter” which brings to mind Pink Floyd’s “A Pillow Of Winds.”

Thomas: In the nicest way possible, this is Gen Z Sad Boy Music. It is not what I normally listen to, but I can appreciate it all the same. The appeal of having a cozy, tender album to just envelop you as a modern comfort album, is directly there with Calico. The delivery of Beatty’s vocals and the mix of them being almost right in your face is an interesting mix. While other typical, similarly produced albums will have the vocals mushed right in there with the instruments, Beatty comes stronger than everything else and it definitely makes it more unique in this sonic world. It’s like if someone was inspired by a Jeff Hanson or Chad VanGaalen in the same melancholic delivery, but brought it into 2024 production-wise and for this generation instead of the sad millennials. It is enjoyable and understandable.

Jacob: I’ll echo Thomas’s sentiments a bit, but I really did find this to be a comforting listen. It leans into the sort of Frank Ocean-style spacey vocals that became so popular throughout the 2010s, the intro, “Ribbons”, slowly introduces the listener into the sort of tone that the rest of the album takes, and I appreciate the consistency. Calico is a very specific album for a specific time, and it is one I really enjoy. It’s background music for writing, and reminds me of finishing essays at 1 AM on a Sunday. While it’s raining. I wouldn’t want to hear it in the car or at a restaurant, but in those quiet moments, it’s great to listen to passively while you go about your day. It’s something you press play on, and let it run straight through. A very easy listen.

Cole: For me, Ryan Beatty has been on a bit of a run of excellence. Not only did he release one of my favorite albums of 2023 in Calico , but his production on four Beyonce tracks of Cowboy Carter (particularly the smooth “Bodyguard”) showed a certain level of versatility that is somewhat rare in this day and age. With Calico in particular, though, similar to Jacob’s thoughts, I remember pressing play on this album for the first time during a finals period at college. The smooth, stripped-back vocals of Beatty were the perfect soundtrack to an essay-writing, study-all-day moment in my life. The simple production, like the light strings in highlights like “White Teeth” and “Andromeda”, allow Beatty’s vocals to shine. It’s an intimate experience and fairly consistent throughout, but a pretty risk-averse album that produces a safe yet quality result. For Beatty, I can’t wait to see what happens when he takes more of a creative risk on future projects, where he could really demonstrate the versatility of his talents that was evident in his production on Cowboy Carter.

https://open.spotify.com/album/5OWpskyoZl9UMkHQwgA05O?si=j_uyfSAtRBWXlb7IVAi1LA

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