Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Beauty, as they say, is only skin deep, an alternative way of proclaiming that we should allow ourselves the freedom of looking beyond the top layer, the initial response to the stimuli effect in which we see the attraction without understanding what the face on show was built upon.
It is not only other people to whom we have this fixation of defining the engraved personality of the sculptured attraction upon, an art form may suffer because we find it easy to dismiss it due to our own fixation of the gloss of another genre, a city or a village becomes the next go to place for the traveller because of the bright lights and the scene that greets as they step off the boat, never realising until it is too late that the city is rotten and corrupt, and the village only looks good because someone painted it in colours designed to lure in the unsuspecting, the ones who don’t see the vacuum underneath.
It is in the power of reminisce and recall that Lee Gallagher and The Hallelujah’s cosmic rock that their brand-new album, L.A. Yesterday evokes such detail and poignant displays of liberating the soul from such madness of being held to emotional ransom from the layered beauty and truly get to grips with what lays underneath, the narrow alleyways of musical direction that you cannot see from the air but which hold an untold splendour waiting to be discovered. The moment when from the ground up you find a new way to appreciate the charm and magnetism that many miss as they prefer to stare at falsehood of the on show mask.
By joining Lee Gallagher through tracks such as Breakin’ Up, Goodnight Sweet Maria, the sensational California Divide, Country Line and the outrageously cool Lullaby for the Acid Queen, Jimmy Dewald, Kirby Hammel, Will Scott and Jason Soda add extra untold depth to an already subtle experience, and with Lee Gallagher placing enormous and well placed trust on Jason Soda’s ear and producing, engineering and mixing, the album takes on a kind of mysticism, a role model of myth that is tangible and forthright in its desirability and yet one that never allows its self to be anything but sincere, honest and a magnet for respectability.
Lee Gallagher’s allure is already known, L.A. Yesterday makes it clear that he sees the detail which others just skim on by.
Lee Gallagher and The Hallelujah release L.A. Yesterday on July 24th.
Ian D. Hall