-Songs for the abandoned and those who would like to be-
I am sitting with Martin Gallop in a Berlin café of the kind "just order something, let’s see if it comes". It’s June and still a bit cool, an early Friday evening. The intersection across the street is busier with wandering tourists and mothers with strollers than with cars.
Of course, nothing comes: self-service.
I express my enthusiasm for Martin's new album “Most Beautiful Song”, he is still exhausted from the work it cost him. I explain to him how difficult it is to write about something that you simply find coherent and good, and I tell him about my plan to place it in a grand, flowery ode among the great American songwriter albums. Martin tiredly waves this off and tells me he is just a guy who toils in the vineyard of music, he is already trying hard, but I shouldn’t compare him with big names, and then he suggests that if I like his work, I could simply write: "Martin Gallop has made a great album. Everything you need to know is in the songs" and then sign my name underneath. Here speaks the fear of every somewhat modest musician, the fear of ruining art through unnecessary embellishment. Okay, I hold back, but a few lines are allowed: Born and raised in southern Canada, Martin starts writing songs as a teenager. At 18, he has his first performances, touring through Canada and the USA. Coincidence, no, love leads him to Germany in 1983. There, he tries out all kinds of jobs and begins, as none of them fit, to infiltrate the German music scene, as he puts it.
He makes a name for himself as a songwriter, musician, and producer, working with artists like Udo Lindenberg, Till Brönner, and Annett Louisan. Only in the early 2000s does Martin Gallop take the stage with his own songs. His first solo album “how much is the world” still lives off Californian-sounding uptempo pop rock. But on his second album, “strange place called home”, released in 2006 by EMI, the sun only shines through frosted glass. Mirror shards reflect the life, searching, and losses of an adult man. Martin Gallop has found his sound. Close-up, somewhat dark, blurred, rough, and as vast as his homeland. For the first time, he now has the opportunity to present these songs on tour to a larger audience, which he always leaves baffled due to his charm and his obviously great talent for touching miniatures in minor.
It takes three years, a lost love, and an empty white room with a piano for Martin Gallop to begin work on a new album. And already with the first almost whispered lines, it becomes clear what it will be about: "i will give you my hand i'll give you my word i will run and jump when you shout i will restore you and adore you and be your devout darling and then i'll give you something to cry about"
It’s about the openly sung, as well as the suppressed pain, the longing in looking back, and also the regret. But always, in the sadness, there is a subtle irony in the manner of a Hank Williams. One does not quite know whether someone is laughing while crying or vice versa. That’s where the art of Martin Gallop begins. His pain is a fine joke in waltz time, and the hidden humor comes to the fore when he dryly states in the café that these are "songs for the abandoned and those who would like to be." In some cases, this also refers to the grumpy artist wanting to be left alone while he broods over lyrics and melodies, as in “acting like Jack” or “sleepless nights”. His work as a songwriter about love is reflected in the charming title track “most beautiful song”. He describes how the most beautiful song in the world, which even has the power to save a messed-up relationship, is dictated to him in a dream. However, he forgets to write it down and sings after it, like Orpheus after the fleeing shadow of Eurydice: "i swear somewhere in the ether out there there's the most beautiful song for you but until that refrain returns to my brain this one will have to do"
There it is again, the ruthlessly disarming Gallop wink! Another time he looks into the distance and remembers his childhood. In “the little blue store”, he resurrects a Canadian small town, with a general store, confessionally separated schools, associated beatings, and first love. A song like an artistically turned chest of drawers from the penultimate century. In the coolness of his bedroom baritone, one can hear Gallop's soul kinship with the classics of the Great American Songbook like Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Mercer, and in his pointed storytelling, the mischief of a Randy Newman.
The music on the album wonderfully complements the mood of the songs. Gallop manages to create intimacy in a dreamlike, effortless manner. As soon as we play, he sits in our room, singing, softly strumming the guitar, the harmonica makes the evening breeze, the honky-tonk piano chuckles, bass and drums roll along arm in arm. Dream images from long ago, trains, ships, romances, old friends and old fools pass by, and when the fade-out of “first impression”, the last song of the album, has faded, one feels enriched by a few colors in the breaks of the night.
This has indeed become the grand ode that the artist expressly forbade me to write. "Why such a fuss?" I hear him grumble. Where one could simply say: "Martin Gallop has delivered a great little album with most beautiful song. Everything you need to know is in the songs!"
Francesco Wilking
