Someone's excited.

No seriously, what the fuck? All three songs sound identical and they’re so retro it hurts. After the teasers we got I was expecting something epic and instead we get this? If this is what the album’s going to be like then I won’t be buying it. Sorry, Calligraphy. You just lost a fan. You’re so much better than all this gimmicky crap. That’s for people who can’t write good songs. YOU CAN WRITE GOOD SONGS. Remember Suicide Pact? Remember how amazing those songs were? Remember how I wanted to get half of LAX tattooed on my body? I’m so glad you changed your name so I can still be a fan of Literary Tourist and think Calligraphy sucks.

I’ll wait and see what the album’s like, but I’m not going to hold my breath.

Cooler - Calligraphy

Betty Blue - Calligraphy

It’s hard to get the members of Calligraphy in the same place, or at least that’s what Liesel St. Claire tells me apologetically after informing me that my interview with the band has turned into a one-on-one. One band member was stranded on the side of the road after their car broke down, one is sick, and the last is just MIA. Fortunately, Liesel is more than willing to chat, promising she’ll be four times as interesting, to compensate.

“Everything about the band began very organically. That’s what I love about working with these guys, it always feels like we’re doing what we’d be doing anyway, even if we weren’t in a band together.” Calligraphy’s first incarnation was Literary Tourist, a five-piece pop-influenced band with a serious LA vibe. Their debut was released in 2013 to very little fanfare, and the band drifted apart not long after the release and subsequent tour.

“It was like we got burned out,” Liesel tells me. “We’d started this fun side project and then it suddenly turned into a serious, fully-fledged band. After the record came out we just kind of looked at each other and went ‘what next?’ Then Alex started getting back into his solo album and I started writing songs that were more folk than pop and it didn’t seem like anything any of us was doing would mesh at all.”

In fact, it was Liesel who was most difficult to convince when the band decided to try again. Busy with a debut novel she’d put together, she’d unofficially retired from music when she received a song in her inbox. “I got this email and it was a track the guys had recorded in Alex’s studio. Everything Alex uses to produce music is like five years out of date and I loved that you could feel that in the music. It was kind of a 70’s throwback, while still being really modern. I’d already been in a band that had tried to recreate a retro style and I think in the end we just ended up mimicking a past sound. What we’re doing in Calligraphy is different. It’s about taking elements of something old and mixing it with something new, and that’s really exciting to me.”

Convinced, Liesel only had one stipulation: that writing and recording was fun. As a result, it took the band two months to pull a six-song demo together. For Calligraphy, work is something that happens in the middle of the fun. “We’d get together at Alex’s place, hang out, maybe watch a movie. Sometimes the guys would be playing video games and I’d be messing around with my guitar and after a couple of hours they’d all end up jamming with me. We never sat down and said ‘right, we have to write today.’ Same thing with recording. Because we didn’t need to book a studio, we had as much time as we wanted.”

With a demo they were happy with, the band set off to get representation. After a previous attempt on a smaller label, they thought a larger company might give them the exposure they needed. It was through a mixture of chance encounters, using connections, and sheer determination that they managed to secure a deal with Warner Brothers. After that, it was back into the studio to polish their recordings and start work on their debut album. A new sound came with a new name, the band settling on Calligraphy after a long night drinking together. Although they’ve since enjoyed making up explanations for the name, the band admit there was no real reason behind it. “We just liked it. It has a good sound and it looks good written down. That’s basically all there was to it.”

‘I’m In Love With My Life’, their first single, is mixture of disco and futuristic, with a video to match. The band walks towards the camera, seemingly unconcerned by the chaos happening around them including crashed cars, gymnastics stunts and fireworks. “I don’t write a lot of happy songs,” Liesel says. “If you listen to the music the others have released, they don’t either. We all find pain and heartache infinitely more inspiring. I’m In Love With My Life was kind of like a personal challenge to us to see if we could write something to counter that. There’s this idea we hold onto about the tortured artist, like it’s uncool to be happy. Being happy doesn’t make you uncool, it makes you lucky. Happiness is worth celebrating.”

I'm In Love With My Life - Calligraphy