Calicoco's Not Afraid To Show What's Underneath

Calicoco's Not Afraid To Show What's Underneath




Giana Caliolo⁣ wouldn’t be anywhere without their people. It’s a fact the musician and songwriter, who records under the moniker Calicoco, underscores throughout a recent hour-long conversation about Underneath, their loud, bold, and bloodletting new album out Friday (September 3) that was created with eight fellow instrumentalists, some of whom also acted as recording engineers. Caliolo might not directly stay in the same city as their trusted collaborators anymore, yet each person remains eager to pick up wherever they left off — especially in service of invigorating Caliolo’s emotionally probing songwriting. “We can routinely do it again. It's just so easy,” Caliolo tells MTV News. “The community I fell into is just strong and thus supportive.”


Producers, engineers, former bandmates, and supporters, largely from Caliolo’s creative residence base of Rochester, New York, get shouted out by name while in our Zoom call; whenever Caliolo forgets to recognize one individual, they send a fast email shortly immediately after we hang up. In an age where pop songs have more credited writers than ever before and technology permits for unprecedented collaboration, Caliolo’s approach to making music usually be much less about process and more about the joy of being around a genuinely good crew.


That spirit is on full display while in Underneath, a furiously fuzzy, nine-song collection penned by Caliolo and brought to dazzling life at a recording studio at the University of Rochester. The album continues the artist’s growth from homespun interior songwriting, as heard on 2018’s Float, into toothier terrain as they scrutinize their own mental anguish. It starts with “I Hate Living With Me” before speeding into hazy songs called “Melancholy,” “Haunting,” and lead single “Heal Me,” a frenzied climb up a never-ending mountain that concludes with Caliolo’s demand to be lobotomized.


“I'm typically pretty good about reaching out, I think, any time If I am struggling. And there was a certain point where I was just not,” they mention. “And at that point, I was writing a lot of this music.”


Underneath doesn’t shy away from the agony that preceded its creation. Although like a lot of fantastic albums place on Earth from processing pain, the very act of writing and recording the songs ultimately played a part in helping Caliolo heal. “I just had moments of not wanting to be here,” they mention. “I feel lucky that I was able to push through with the music stuff. I think that helped me so much to have that outlet.”


segment of Underneath’s wonderful power lies in its forceful drumming, handled by Caliolo themself, which streams the rawness of their songwriting into big blasts. Percussion comes needless to say for Caliolo, who played various instruments in a couple of bands throughout 11 years spent in Rochester. They moved to the city to study photography in 2008 and remained immediately after graduation as they settled into the local music scene in groups called Secret Pizza, Pony Hand, and Buckets.


But members moved away, left due to illness, or simply noticed other adventures — as bands often do — and Caliolo began writing new kinds of songs. The opening Calicoco release, Needy, came in 2017, by means of the the delightfully named local label Dadstache Records. Caliolo counts that collaborative time in Rochester as important to not just their creativity, nevertheless their entire life.


Early on, a local booker asked them to perform at one of the city’s iconic underground venues, the Bug Jar; not long immediately after, they played in a musical group with each other. “Having all those people just to give you possibilities down the line, I felt really lucky there,” Caliolo says. “It's just really friendly, the music community there, and it's just really cooperative. I love it and I miss it.”


In 2019, they relocated back to their childhood residence in Long Beach, New York, where the landline pings about 10 minutes into our interview. Caliolo apologizes for the noise, though their early songwriting work for Underneath caused far louder sound waves to ripple while in the residence. “I remember shutting my door in my room, putting my headphones on, screaming into the microphone, and going nuts on the keyboard and stuff,” Caliolo says. “I almost feel like I don't remember all of it fully.”


Those beginning tracks, and also extra guitar and vocal recordings laid down in their bedroom, helped any time once they ventured back Rochester to carry out most of the album in January 2020 with producer and recording engineer Stephen Roessner. “He pushed me with this music a lot. He was just like, ‘You're fucking sad. Be fucking sad.’ And I was having a really hard time, even throughout the recording process, and he was just there and basically contained my hand as well as gave me little punches to be like, ‘You got this.’”


Without those nudges, the darkness on songs like “Melancholy,” which spans five minutes, might have been much less palpable. As a substitute, it builds to its cathartic lyric, “Make me something I can feel again!” With immense bluster, while the title track finds just enough venom for its snakebite chorus talking about losing control. “I think it relates to how I was so up and down, and me going from depressed to feeling manic,” they mention. “I feel like I was attempting to paint a picture of my brain.” The high volume lends a needed counterweight to the album’s quieter moments, like the nightmarishly sedate “Cuore Mio” and fog-filled closer “I Was the Devil.”


That closer, a reworked version of an acoustic ballad, noticed new life thanks to a synthesizer part played by Roessner in an empty classroom. The burning, Rothko-red sound fills the whole sonic frame, allowing Caliolo just enough space to deliver the heart-rending lyrics. “When he began playing the chords on synth, it was just so intense. It sounds so much more intense than acoustic guitar. It broke my heart again,” they mention. They can even hear themselves crying while in the second verse. “I've never cried recording before, nevertheless that happened.”


You don’t need to know that to feel how deep “I Was the Devil” goes, or to perceive the frayed emotion that lurches while in Underneath, courtesy of Caliolo’s work with their benevolent creative corps. Whenever they say recording “I Was the Devil,” Caliolo adds a telling insight: “It felt really big, and my little voice was singing through it.” Their recording crew might disagree. Once it’s amplified by a whole slew of collaborators, Caliolo’s voice is the largest thing in the room.









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