Kent’s The Gallerys have been turning heads down south with shows around the county and in London culminating in a sold out end of year show at Tunbridge Wells Forum to coincide with the release of their third EP Lucid Trail on the final Saturday of 2018. We run the rule over the four songs that make up that EP and discover why more people are falling for their charms.
There’s something immediate about The Gallerys’ songwriting craft that draws you in. Their songs don’t try and mesmerise you with trickery and bold statements, but stick to the basics of their craft to deliver four more songs that feel instantly familiar, but which reveal their own personality as the songs progress.
The EP’s title track starts with a simple acoustic guitar, wistful vocals musing “maybe it’s time to move around, figure it out, get your feet back on the ground” casting its net wide in terms of people attaching them to the lyrics and applying it to their own situation like so many great songs do. Its final line “in time you’ll figure you’ve done just fine, things happen for a reason in your mind” leaves a beaming ray of positivity in its wake.
Shadow Street starts with glorious layered harmonies that come back in the chorus. Again its immediacy is its main weapon, stop start as it progresses, no bold statements of intent just gloriously dragging their influences kicking and screaming into the here and now.
Steady Beat is a louder and harder track, showing a different side to The Gallerys, rolling along at breathless pace through a call and response section in the chorus and a big guitar solo in the breakdown. It talks of “mixed emotions of love and hate” before ending in a wall of guitars, all in under three minutes.
Silver Lining is imbued with the romanticism that’s carried forward from their earlier releases but delivered with a real controlled assurance that marks a band growing and pushing its own borders. It opens with the invitation to “walk with me on a summer’s day” and more vocal harmonies lie under the verses where thoughts of a better place run through the song’s theme with finding love being the silver lining of the title.
Lucid Trail is an impressive effort, steeped in the rich songwriting tradition of their influences but with more than enough of the trio’s personalities and intrinisic knack of finding rhythm and hooks of their own woven through it. It’s a real step up for a band that is starting to spread its wings and being feted by a growing band of observers as we enter the new year.
The Gallerys are on Facebook and Twitter.
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