Calva Louise will never play a hometown show. That’s because, technically, they don’t have one.
The trio’s members each hail from vastly different corners of the world. Vocalist-guitarist Jess Allanic is from Venezuela, bassist Alizon Taho from France and drummer Ben Parker from New Zealand — and they convened thousands of miles from their respective countries in the United Kingdom. Each lured there by the perennially rich music scene, they met in London and formed Calva Louise in 2016. Music quickly became their universal language.
Over three albums, 2019’s Rhinoceros, 2021’s Euphoric and last year’s Over the Threshold, Calva Louise have refined their distinct, multicultural sound — an exciting mix of electronica-flecked punk, nu-metal and post-hardcore — which has earned them pockets of dedicated fans all over the world.
They’ve already checked off bucket-list festival slots across the globe, from the U.K.’s Download Festival and Germany’s Vainstream Rockfest to U.S. favorites Sonic Temple and Welcome to Rockville. But now, something even bigger is brewing — and their sky-high vision has them poised for an even greater expansion.
This year, the band dropped two explosive new singles, “La Corriente” and “Under the Skin,” which saw their sound metamorphose into something heightened, more daring and notably heavier. With their fourth album expected to drop in 2025, all doors are open for Calva Louise. And, as a testament to their grit, they’re writing their own future without a label bankrolling the project.
This, of course, presents its own financial and logistical challenges for Calva Louise — but the silver lining is their total artistic freedom. There’s nobody behind them telling them, “No.”
The band’s independence has allowed them to stride ahead and develop aspects of their creative world that their previous label had frowned upon: from leaning into heavier sounds to expanding the unique sci-fi lore that underpins their music — the latter stemming from a narrative that Allanic first developed when she was just 10 years old.
“It started when I was still in Venezuela and it’s really connected to my personal experiences,” she explains of the surreal tale, which begins as an origin story of the band before blasting off into a multi-world epic (a plot Calva Louise further flesh out in their graphic novel Rhinoceros). “The band is named after the main character, Louise, and Calva means ‘bald’ — but it’s also linked to a play called The Bald Soprano [by Eugène Ionesco,] which is about the absurdity of language. The story [is about] this world, and then there’s another world where we have doubles — and all these forces are out to keep us apart from our doubles.”
It’s heady stuff, no doubt, but Allanic believes the storyline is a crucial element to why Calva Louise are resonating with such a wide-ranging global audience. “People connect more with the story than with us as individuals,” she says. “I always felt it was hard for people to connect with our personal stories. We don’t have family here. We didn’t go to school or university here. When Alizon got here, he couldn’t speak English. We learned the language to be part of the music scene.”
“We each have a lot of different influences, based on where we were and what we were listening to growing up,” says Parker of Calva Louise’s collective musical bedrock, which includes Muse, System of a Down and Queens of the Stone Age, as well as Latin American hip-hop, metal, folk and alt artists Molotov, Calle 13, El Cuarteto de Nos and Simón Díaz. “I think it translates into the music and makes it a little bit different.”
Calva Louise’s eclectic sound and fantastical world-building are helping them slice through cultural barriers — and naturally there’s a piece of their home nations’ music in everything they create. Nowhere is that more evident than the songs Allanic writes in Spanish. But regardless of what language the singer is employing, the emotion she conveys with her vocals is still capable of transcending linguistic differences.
In fact, Calva Louise are all about transcendence: from spanning cultural divides to overcoming the challenges of being independent operators. Without a label’s backing, they’re DIY to the core — and are proud of the punk-as-fuck resourcefulness that they’ve cultivated over the years.
They record in their own bedrooms and kitchens, build their own equipment and create their own music videos, with Allanic acting as both director and editor. They’ve even schooled themselves in CGI, which helped them bring the stunning sci-fi scenes of “Under the Skin” from page to screen. And whether they’re crafting cerebral, digital expressions or devising lo-fi creative solutions, Calva Louise aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty.
“I needed a keyboard that I could slide away so there’s no barrier between me and the audience,” Allanic recalls of one DIY project, “and Alizon used wood, skateboard bearings and metal to build this [sliding stand].” A video of the singer playing Taho’s rather genius invention later went viral on TikTok.
“Everything you see onstage is literally just made in the garage,” Taho adds. “We don’t have the resources to buy all these materials and gear, but we still want to offer an interesting experience for everyone that comes to the show.”
So far, Calva Louise’s ascent has been a gradual, slow-burn rise that’s showing no signs of cooling — and they wouldn’t have it any other way. “It’s always helped never to have hype, because there’s less pressure in terms of delivering something,” Allanic concludes. “We’ve never had to prove ourselves — but we prove ourselves to each other.”