CD: The Callstore – Save No One

At first it seems akin to entering a world conjured by Efterlkang at their most elegiac. Strings swell and what sounds like a cimbalom chimes. A wordless vocal sighs. After the opening instrumental – titled “Intro” – “Lovers Lane” (sic) surges forward with cascading post-punk guitar recalling Manchester’s Chameleons and a deep, deep mumbled vocal which through the murky delivery seems to be concerned with trying to get the song’s subject to wake up and realise who the singer is.

Save No One is compellingly dark. It is also remarkably cohesive for a first album, bluster-free and refreshingly idiosyncratic. Leonard Cohen – especially on the sparse “The Letting Go” – and The Tindersticks lurk, but in melding post-punk and a continental European outlook, The Callstore has fashioned a reflective, seductive debut which is, obstinately, hard to let go of. It wants to be heard repeatedly.

The Callstore is the Brittany born but London resident Simon Bertrand. Once the French origin of its creator is known, the context of Save No One becomes a line of deep-voiced Gallic talk-singers stretching back several decades. More recently, Benjamin Biolay has a high-gloss take on this approach, while Alain Souchon and Jacques Higelin were at it somewhat earlier. The mumbly, close-miked Serge Gainsbourg of 1968/69’s “Manon” is also a nodding acquaintance. The lineage isn’t immediately obvious as it isn’t explicit. Although underlying, it still exerts a pull on Bertrand. Seek this out. It fascinates.

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Overleaf: watch The Callstore perform a stripped-down take of Save No One’s “The Departed”

Watch The Callstore perform a stripped-down take of Save No One’s “The Departed”