Jim Grey & Josh Griffin – Caligula’s Horse 'Silence is Grace'
Twelve to thirteen years into their career, Brisbane’s mighty trojan horse of progressive rock and metal are set to release their sixth album, Charcoal Grace. Yes, you read that right, this band has released an album virtually every two years for well over a decade. And it’s not like they knock out throwaway three-minute plastic pop songs that sound like they could have been written on the back of a restaurant napkin in 15 minutes. Quite the opposite is the case – their songs are long, involved, complex epics full of sweeping musical vistas and well-thought-out themes and ideas.
During that time we’ve also had the catastrophic global shutdown known as ‘Covid’ too, a time notoriously disastrous for independent bands and the arts in general. On top of seemingly perpetually depressed economic times, times that make it increasingly difficult for independent bands to operate.
How have they managed to maintain such extraordinary creative productivity and output? Frontman and co-founder Jim Grey and long-time drummer Josh Griffin joined Wall of Sound recently to discuss this and several other Caligula’s Horse-related topics.
“That’s a good question, I’m not really sure I have an answer for that one,” Grey admits, before thinking about it for a moment longer. “We have a natural need to create, and the two of us in particular, Sam (Vallen, guitarist and co-founding member) and I understand one another creatively. We have this sort of shorthand we’ve developed, meaning that writing an album isn’t this terrifying prospect any more, like it was when we were younger. (Now) it’s like. ‘let’s go!’, it’s exciting and we have a process, and we just go with it.”
“I think, this is combined with the fact that I’m not sure that I could live my life without expressing myself artistically in some way, and that goes for all of us.”
And it’s not like they’re emphasising quantity over quality. Each album is as good as or better than the previous one. Grey believes they have kind of a ‘secret weapon’ that keeps the creative fires burning, juices flowing and quality strong.
“We have the benefit, as a band, of having a Sam Vallen,” Grey laughs, with Griffin joining him. “Not every band has one of those, because, I don’t think he knows quite how good he is. He’s a guy who knows his faults, and knows where he’s good, but I don’t think he quite grasps how unique his work ethic and creativity are.”
“So we have a Sam, which helps, but we also have this well-practised self-criticism that is not in a sense of negativity and kind of like (in haughty French accent), ‘what I have written is garbage and I’m going to throw it on the fire’. It’s nothing like that, it’s more like going, ‘this is not my best work,’ or, ‘I know exactly which lines out of this stanza I’ve written are place-holder and shit, I’m going to come back to this tomorrow, but I’m not going to delete them.’ That’s the kind of trick to it.”
“I saw that first hand in a writing session I had with Sam,” Griffin continues, “we had spent the morning working on one particular piece of music, and it was beautiful, we were vibing on it. We hit, not really a slump, but we slowed down, so we broke for lunch. I noticed he was really quiet through most of that lunch, and all of a sudden he just says, ‘I don’t like it, we’re going to start again from that section.’ I was gutted, I was like ‘but me, I like it’, and he goes, ‘it’s not working.’ So for the next handful of hours, we circled back to that particular moment. But it was fascinating, just that incredible self-criticism, but it’s very constructive. He recognised that it wasn’t sitting well with him and he didn’t enjoy it.”
“I haven’t had that much experience, I love everything I’m hearing right now. To see that part of the process, it was such an incredible thing to witness, to see the throughline that he made, and we made together, to make that piece of music, was fascinating.”
The album, entitled Charcoal Grace, is everything a fan could want from a C-Horse album – it’s epic, it’s highly progressive and the levels of musicianship inherent in its grooves are as exemplary as usual. One thing that may strike the listener on initial listens is just how superb the record sounds, it is electrifying in its power and energy and crystal in its clarity. According to Grey, this is down to the same ‘secret weapon’ as is the band’s productivity and work ethic.
“It’s . . . Sam?” He says with mock trepidation. “Sam mixed and produced the album. Sam and Jared Adlam at out at Machine Labs Studio, they engineered the album, and I think part of the mission statement was to make it sound emotional, honest and real, and to highlight the performances and the musical voice of all of the players. That’s why we also went with orchestral parts, live strings, live woodwind, live flute, and each one of those, the people what were playing those, those artists are insane. Having them in the studio and watching them work was just wild, their professionalism is on another level.”
On the surface, it seems an odd choice of title, but considering the concept behind it, the themes inferred and explicit within its lyrics and imagery, and the times in our shared history that inspired it, it makes perfect sense.
“It is odd,” Grey admits. “Charcoal Grace came to me pretty early actually, and I pitched it to the guys as kind of a working title, and they were like ‘that’s kind of an evocative title, let’s not get attached to it, but let’s definitely put it on the list.’ It came to me when I was trying to describe silence, because I kept writing these things, even just little things to myself in my phone, little notes to myself, little rhyming couplets, that involved silence and stillness and loss. They were the themes that I kept coming back to based on what we’ve experienced in the last few years.”
“Silence felt frightening, dark, but also alluring and beautiful and kind of addictive, and somehow that phrase, Charcoal Grace, came out of that to describe silence, and I thought it was quite evocative. And it stuck.”
And juxtaposed with the pure progressiveness and the instrumental, production and songwriting dexterity inherent in the album, Charcoal Grace packs one hell of an emotional wallop as well. “That couldn’t be helped,” Grey says, “there are stories on this album that I feel needed to be told. Not only for our own exorcism, our own catharsis, but also because it’s important to talk about stuff that’s happened and, as artists, express the depression that we’ve experienced and express how the ego death and the huge change that all of us went through over the last few years, it would feel wrong, it would feel dishonest to release an album that was full of our usual self-empowerment, uplifting stuff when we’re not feeling that.”
“The emotion comes from the honesty as well, and the stories within.”
2024 is going to be a massive year for the C-Horse – we see the imminent release of the monumental Charcoal Grace, and subsequent weeks and months will find the band touring the globe extensively, with dates across North America (with superb American progressive act Earthside), Australia and the UK and Europe filling up much of the first half of the year. Grey and Griffin have a special plan for themselves while on the first leg of the album tour, whilst being simultaneously excited about what such extensive global touring brings.
“Josh and I have plans to get fat in the United States,” Grey states, and they both laugh uproariously.
“We have been inundated with so many fans saying, ‘you need to eat at this place’,” Griffin interjects, “I had one guy message me the other day going, ‘hey dude, hit up Wingstop while you’re over here’, and I’m like, ‘really? This is troublesome!’”
“The list is getting long,” Grey laughs, “but yeah, we get to tour Europe, and America, and Australia, and possibly more this year, in one year, and just making up for lost time. The number of people we’re going to meet, and the number of times we’re going to celebrate music with people in these sweaty little venues, is going to be pretty frickin’ special.”
Interview by Rod Whitfield (@Rod_Whitfield)
Caligula’s Horse’s sixth album Charcoal Grace is out now.
Get it here
Caligula’s Horse – Charcoal Grace tracklisting
1. The World Breathes With Me
2. Golem
3. Charcoal Grace I: Prey
4. Charcoal Grace II: A World Without
5. Charcoal Grace III: Vigil
6. Charcoal Grace IV: Give Me Hell
7. Sails
8. The Stormchaser
9. Mute
