Barcelona rules. It's got the most amazing combination of beaches, modernist architecture, grand boulevards, and rich nightlife one could ever imagine. That anyone would choose to live anywhere else is phenomenal to me. Why am I not in Barcelona? Maybe it's because they speak a funny language-- not Spanish, but Catalan, where they use x's in place of ch's. All those years of high school spent learning Spanish and all I can say is, "No tengo una cabeza," like the crazy man who wanders my street at night.
This is one probable reason the Gallygows sing in English. No, they're not crazy. They're from Barcelona, which you would never suspect, what with their hapless adoration for American and English pop. This is evidenced by their most amusing song on their debut album, "Live at Budokan," which, in addition to making pointed reference to Cheap Trick, also contains the lyrics, "Show you how here comes the sun/ I wanna play that song like John/ I can't help it." Plus, the song is pure indie pop, rather than more derivative Kindercore drivel.
Swinging melodies and condensed moments of dissonance resolving over strong basslines are the ingredients of the Gallygows' better songs. The opening track on Give It to Her, "Tone Generator," employs these to the Nth while crafting perhaps the most amusing word-play on the album ("She was a queen in MIDI land doing hot top stereo pan/ He was a wide-band VCO but the lady wanted more/ Phase in, phase out/ What about being my tone generator?").
The Lennon kicks in much later, on "My Citizen," when a monster buzz saws into a piano/acoustic thing lifted straight off "A Day in the Life." What makes it theirs is a weird, slipping melody, double-tracked in such a way that it can only be called Phil Collins-esque. It's that righteous, even with tucked away female back-ups.
But on the next track, "Wait," the horrific mid-temponess of the album starts setting in. Those sparse kicks, the strumming, and the Hammond lock groove, and suddenly the lack of inflection in the otherwise shiny pop vocals becomes irritating. "Goalkeeper," which helps polish off the album, gets downright wedding-jam with heavy employment of a technique called "the walking bassline," which can also be called the cheapest, most lackluster way to accompany chord changes in the Western world. Its final blow-out is what I, as a smug American, can call "incredibly annoying Euro-noodling," which, unlike American noodling (Tortoise), employs cheesy synths, drum machines and vocals a la "Video Killed the Radio Star." "Roller Disco Combo" is a late-night, pot-smoking studio goof-off, placed as the final track to ensure that listeners understand it isn't their "serious" song. It's like Ladytron without the icy pretension.
"Confusing" is the Gallygows position in the indie pop continuum. A third of Give It to Her is straightforward, Juliana Hatfield-style pop, another third bathes in Beatles, and the other third consists of Aislers Set-like modernism. What Gallygows lack is the full consciousness of their pop potential or the critical distance to cut away the dead weight. And with the Posies' Jon Auer helping craft their more "pop" moments, they best take the singles and run from their soft rock tendencies.
