Pink Callies Examines Dark Cynicism On “Wouldn’t Need a Coincidence”

Grayton Green fronted a lo-fi rock act called Datenight for five years. After the release of their last record, he was feeling his creativity tug him into a wholly different direction. He hadn’t planned on it, but he willingly followed and soon a new album took shape.

“Well, for the first time in a while, I had written songs that I knew weren’t really Datenight songs,” the Nashville-based musician shares with American Songwriter. “It wasn’t really a conscious thing. The new songs were just coming from somewhere else entirely. I had so many ideas for new songs that I needed to start something new in order to move forward. It just felt right to make songs for a new project.”

As a result, Green steps into his new creative endeavour called Pink Callies with a self-titled debut record, out Friday (January 8), and finds himself soaring higher than he anticipated. Standout cut “Wouldn’t Need a Coincidence” fully embraces his vast influences, including The Clash, with its shaky reverb and high-powered electric guitar. 

The song is “about expecting the worst out of life and people. I try not to have that outlook. But that’s what songs are really useful for. I can dive into a certain feeling and put it somewhere real,” he says. Green dresses up such sharp-toothed lyrics with waves of sound, often flooding the senses, and its throbbing beat is downright relentless. “For most of the songs, I wanted them to be excessively noisy and over the top with feedback, like a wall of sound,” he notes, “and I hope that’s what the song comes off as. Something that holds tension and clashing notes.”

“I think lyrically [this song] is probably the most sincere” of the album, he observes. “There’s no real hidden language in it for the most part. It’s more of a straightforward outlook on a particular emotion. So, I think it helps break things up and adds more diversity to the album as a whole.”

In many ways, Pink Callies arrives as an agent for Green to finally work through his emotions and perhaps to greater understanding of who he is. “It’s strange how writing an album can be like a time capsule for your thoughts and ideas at a certain time or place,” he says. “And I feel like the record really captures the mood I was living in since the start of [last] year. So, it feels great to have put it all in one spot.”