There are a few things in music that have a direct path to the pleasure centre of my brain. Fuzzed out bass, high energy riffs, and a filthy Glaswegian accent are all at the top of that list. What a treat to have all three served to me in spades in ‘Life Is Bliss’, the explosive sophomore album from Glasgow punks Gallus. After spending time touring with bands like Biffy Clyro and Teen Mortgage, ‘Life Is Bliss’ feels like a victory lap – a confident album, complete, coherent, and very cool.
Lead single ‘Sick Bastards’ acts as a mission statement for the album as a whole. It’s extremely nineties in tone and style during the verses with vocals and sampled record scratches are layered into back of the mix. Meanwhile the rhythm alternates between a bouncing, groovy riff and surprisingly tender guitars. The chorus, introduced with the spoken title of the song, is massive, dropping the nineties production effects for a full dunk in the sonic fuzz, while Barry Dolan’s vocals wax lyrical about close calls with Glasgow’s police fuzz.
‘MK Des (Miss Out)’ pulses with a similar energy. An off-kilter lead line accents the driving chorus and presages the verse’s syncopated rhythms. The vocals here sing, often soaringly, of social faux pas and self-deprecation. The result is playful and makes you want to move; to bounce, to dance, to sing along.
At the same time, the lyrics are ironically bittersweet for an album called ‘Life Is Bliss’ – catchy poems about working class life in Glasgow, filled with a thousand personal mistakes and haunted by the alienation of neoliberal austerity. Dolan yearns for “something” in ‘Alert Alert’; in ‘Something There’, he keeps on “getting nowhere, getting nowhere.” He’s “never good at working it out” on ‘MK Des’, he’s lost his mind in ‘Sick Bastard’, and as the album ends, on ‘M8’, he just has a feeling “we forgot what made this place.”
That dark lyrical tone contrasts with the prevailing high octane music on ‘Life Is Bliss’. Opening track ‘Au Contraire’ is a rollicking ride, Dolan equally catchy when hitting high notes as when yelling his heart out. That energy persists, never letting up, until at least after ‘Donnie Murdo’, by which point most of the album has blasted through, fuelled by petrol fumes. The groove never lets up. Sometimes it’s riffier – as in ‘Better Than Nothing’, ‘Stupid Dog’, and ‘Just A Man’ – sometimes more relentless, but the rhythm is consistently upbeat.
Even when Gallus let the energy drop in the back end of the album, it’s with intent – ‘Something There’ is as close as they get to a ballad, with a driving chorus that brings Dinosaur Pile-Up to mind. It’s followed by ‘Jesus Wept’ which picks the pace up but still allows the lead guitar to float above the merciless beat of the rhythm section.
And then there’s ‘M8’, the closing song, with a chugging bluesy rhythm underneath echoing, dissonant lead lines. The effect is one of unease, as restless as it is haunting. That haunting element picks up in the final moments of the album, as a voiceover talks over distorted feedback and street sounds about the deindustrialisation of Glasgow and its impact on the local community and economy: ghosts of the past and lost futures all that remain.
WILL BRIGHT