Galahad Releases Adventurous New Album
The UK-based prog rockers scale new heights on "The Last Great Adventurer"
Thank you for spending part of your day with Michael’s Record Collection! Before we get started today, I just wanted to let you know that Michael’s Record Collection is now on TikTok. I have no idea how often I’ll post (so far, not much), but it’s there if you want to follow, and it will likely have a bit different content. Now that that’s out of the way…
The downside of today’s world is that there is so much going on that sometimes things fall through the cracks, because there just aren’t enough hours in the day to monitor everything. So it was for me with the release of Galahad’s latest album, The Last Great Adventurer. Its release escaped my notice completely when it dropped in late October. But, I’ve since corrected that and found it to be a standout slice of progressive rock with a lot of variety and some new sounds from the band.
Vocalist Stuart Nicholson and keyboard player Dean Baker — the band’s two primary songwriters — were kind enough to sit with me for a lengthy Zoom call to discuss the record. They were gracious with their time and went into great detail about the songs on the album.
Let’s get to that story.
Galahad is a band that was fashionably late to being unfashionable. Formed in 1985, the band released its first CD, Nothing is Written, in 1991. That was a bit late to ride the second wave of British progressive rock — often referred to as “neo-progressive,” sometimes as an insult and other times as a compliment — that had launched bands like Marillion, Pallas, IQ, Twelfth Night, and Pendragon in the early to mid-80s.
Prog rock hasn’t been fashionable since before the term started being used to describe the myriad sounds that adventurous and complex bands were making, but Galahad still somehow fell through even those obscure cracks to some extent.
But the band didn’t care. The members of Galahad have always made music for themselves, and they were happy to have those fans who opted to come along for the ride.
The band has persevered for nearly 40 years, going through more than a dozen ex-members, including two who are sadly no longer with us — guitarist John O’Callaghan (a member in 1985) and bassist Neil Pepper (1992–2002, 2009–2011).
The current lineup of vocalist Stuart Nicholson (since 1985), keyboardist Dean Baker (since 1997), drummer Spencer Luckman (since 1987), guitarist Lee Abraham (on guitars since 2017 after a stint as the band’s bassist from 2005-2009), and bassist Mark Spencer (since 2018 after a stint playing both bass and guitar from 2012-2014) released Galahad’s 11th studio album in late October, The Last Great Adventurer.
Coming off of the epic concept piece Seas of Change four years ago, Galahad wanted to make sure the next album consisted of distinct, stand-alone tracks rather than being conceptual in nature. The band accomplished that, yet the songs are cohesive and are loosely tied together through different facets of the human condition. Just don’t call it a concept album.
The “proper” album is the first five tracks — with the idea being to release the album on vinyl. A lack of materials and available pressing plant time have delayed a vinyl version of the record for the time being. However, the good news is that there are two “bonus” tracks on the CD and digital releases, extending the playing time to over 55 minutes. There are also radio edits available from the album’s first two songs.
Writing for the album was done in multiple ways over a number of years. Sometimes the words came first, but other times the music was in place before Nicholson added lyrics. Members of Galahad typically record their ideas and share them through an online folder they can all access. Some of the ideas on The Last Great Adventurer sat in the folder for years.
Nicholson and Baker are the primary songwriters, although the music for “Another Life Not Lived” was originally composed by Pepper prior to his untimely passing. Baker and Nicholson built one song, “Blood, Skin and Bone,” off a riff given to them by U.K. artist Koburg, with some additional guitar orchestration by Abraham.
Recording began back in 2019. Everyone’s bits were recorded in home studios for the most part, although co-producer Karl Groom — the guitarist for progressive metal band Threshold — recorded Luckman’s drums at Clive Nolan’s (Arena, Pendragon) Thin Ice Studios just prior to the pandemic lockdown.
“(We) managed to get all the drums recorded at Thin Ice, thank goodness, because it would be very difficult to record those in our houses, really,” Nicholson said. “We did a couple of (recording) sessions. I think we did the second session early in 2020. And then, bang, COVID hit, and that was it.”
From that point on, various parts were recorded at the musicians’ home studios all over southern England — Surrey, Dorset, Hampshire, and Hertfordshire.
As for the music itself, certain sounds come to mind when one thinks of the term progressive rock, but The Last Great Adventurer is, at its heart, a rock album. It sounds modern and fresh — hardly the hodgepodge of ‘widdly’ sounds, Hammond organ, and mellotron washes that make up the clichés of the genre, although whiffs of those are present. It’s melodic, crunchy in places, and it rocks, but there is plenty of complexity and stellar guitar and keyboard parts to satisfy the stereotypical stodgy old prog fan.
The album kicks off with the accessible (despite being over eight minutes) “Alive,” which is the band’s love letter to Galahad fans, who have followed the group on its musical journey over the years. The chorus is simple but melodic, and Nicholson’s distinctive voice shines brightly on it.
“I heard ‘Alive,’ and I loved the melody on the chorus,” Nicholson said. “I was like, ‘Yeah, this could be a really great chorus.’ It’s simple, but it’s quite effective. It took a while to get the lyrics to fit, but we kind of got there in the end on the verses and what have you.”
Abraham’s solo blazes through a nice chunk of the song’s back half. Baker mostly uses more modern sounds in the song but he does have a nice solo that hearkens back to something more familiar to old-school progressive rock fans.
Second track “Omega Lights” ended up being named after its working title, which was taken from the synthesizer patch Baker was using.
“I just loved the melodies in that song,” Nicholson said about the album’s second track. “Omega lights actually is the name of a sound. Normally we would change those. That’s just a working title. But I thought ‘Omega Lights’ actually is a great title.”
Baker’s working title for the music inspired Nicholson to write about one of his favorite places near his home.
“It reminds me of a place called Sandbanks near where we live, which is a long stretch of beach just outside Poole Harbor,” said the singer and lyricist. “And I love it in the summer. I go there a lot, mainly in the evenings. I prefer it in the evenings, when there’s less people about, basically — when it's warm. And it’s just such a beautiful place. And the idea of the omega lights is basically just all the lights around the harbor at night, because omega is the end, as it were — alpha to omega, or whatever. I thought that sort of just tied in really quite nicely.
“So it’s actually kind of a love song to a place. It’s a lovely spot. I love where we live. It’s just a nice place to go, basically.”
The band included a photograph of that spot in the booklet, as shown below, and it does seem like a peaceful and beautiful place to hang out:
The music starts off grand and cinematic, like a film score, before Spencer’s bass kicks in, followed by drums and vaguely Pink Floyd-ish guitar work from Abraham. Lyrically, it’s easy to imagine Nicholson sitting on the beach, looking out over the water, pouring a stream of consciousness onto an empty page.
As we look out towards the endless horizon
Across a shimmering millpond sea, just you and me
I feel my heart pumping so fast and so furious
And it makes me smile so much, I just love this ride, I just love this ride
Omega lights, omega lights
You make me feel like nothing else can
Omega lights, omega lights
You don’t have to try, it’s right here inside of me
After the second chorus, the band kicks into a more up-tempo instrumental section that sounds like it’s got a bit of mellotron in the mix — likely a patch Baker uses. A softly sung bridge gives way to an atmospheric solo by Abraham with Spencer’s bass and Luckman’s drums serving as the rhythmic foundation while Baker provides more cinematic texture.
Although it’s 10 minutes long, it always goes by seemingly much more quickly than that when I listen to it.
“Blood, Skin and Bone” addresses the prejudice people still can’t seem to get past when it comes to outer appearance, whether it’s skin color, clothing, hair style, etc. Nicholson’s lyrics aren’t overly preachy in the song, but they do point out that people are more alike than different overall and that this basic lesson seems impossible to grasp for many.
It’s a sobering thought when you think of what it is that makes us
It doesn’t matter where you’re from or the size or the colour of your skin
We must be so careful not to judge each other so quickly and so harshly
Blood, skin and bone is all that lies underneath
Blood, skin and bone is at the heart of what we are
Blood, skin and bone is all that lies beneath our flesh
Blood, skin and bone is at the heart of what we are
“I just listened to the music and I thought, ‘Yeah, this this could work.’ And I'd got the melody — the blood, skin and bone (part) — so I already had that sorted in my head and it happened to work very well with what Dean had written musically,” Nicholson said. “And then I just had this idea of, you know, the fact that there's so much prejudice in this world based upon what people look like, how big they are, or what color they are, and when underneath it all, actually we’re all made of the same stuff. And I guess what separates us is more psychological than physical.”
Musically, “Blood, Skin and Bone” didn’t start with Galahad at all.
“There was another artist called Koburg, who originally came up with the riff and the genesis of that track,” Baker said. “And then it didn’t really fit with her own music. And she said, ‘This might be something which could work with Galahad.’ I developed a chorus to work with it and a few other little sounds. But basically, that was the first time I think that we’ve ever actually worked with someone outside of Galahad to come up with something.
“The great thing was the fact that Koburg just said, ‘Just do what you want with it.’ So there was no to-ing or fro-ing about, because as musicians, we do get a bit precious sometimes…but luckily she just released it. I absolutely adore the riff and there’s that vocal line going over the top, which is actually a Hebrew line. And yeah, it had all the elements in it to make a start on the rest of the track.”
The song features some of Galahad’s heaviest playing on it, but it goes through tempo changes, and the heaviness gives way to soft acoustic guitar over atmospheric keyboard washes, before the crunch returns for the final section.
One of the tracks I found particularly interesting was “Enclosure 1764,” which is the only song on the album for which Nicholson didn’t write the lyrics. Those came from an old poem.
“Basically, Dean sent me this very widescreen kind of filmic-type music, and I thought, ‘This is kind of epic. It kind of needs something a little bit different,’” Nicholson said. “Something not just a straight ahead verse, chorus, verse, chorus, normal song-type thing. I thought, ‘Well, maybe a poem or something might work with it.’”
Nicholson poured through some of the poetry in his personal collection but couldn’t find anything that quite fit. Then he accidentally stumbled upon “The Goose and the Common,” an 18th-century traditional anti-enclosure nursery rhyme, while searching online. Nicholson said he doesn’t remember how he came across it, but something about it spoke to him.
“I read the words and thought, ‘Actually, although it’s, you know, three or four hundred years old, it’s still relevant. It still rings true after all these years.”
Like the beginning of “Omega Lights,” the entirety of “Enclosure 1764” is quite a cinematic piece, and it’s the album’s shortest song, with a running time of just over four minutes. Sampled ethereal, operatic, female vocals soar in the background over Nicholson’s simple vocal delivery of the main lyrics, which speak on the topic of oppression.
They hang the man and flog the woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
Yet they let the great villain loose
That steals the common from the goose
The law demands that we atone
When we take things we do not own
But leaves the lords and ladies fine
Who take things that are yours and mine
Luckman provides old-timey, military-style march drumming through the first couple of minutes. The song then transforms into a more modern-sounding piece, yet retains its cinematic feel. Baker said the inspiration for the music was French electronic outfit M83.
“I was listening to M83, and they do that song ‘Outro,’ the theme to the TV series Versailles,” Baker said. “And it struck me when I heard it the first time. I thought ‘Oh my goodness.’ Neil Pepper, our old bass player, I remember him saying to me once — we were trying to find like a pad sound on the synthesizer, and he said, ‘Find me a pad sound that makes me weep.’ And I've never forgotten that. And sure enough, I was listening to (‘Outro’) and I was thinking, ‘M83 found something that makes you weep.’ And I just started writing this piece — quite inspired from that one particular track.”
The shortest song on the record is followed by the longest, as the final song on the ‘proper’ album is the title track. Lyrically, “The Last Great Adventurer” is an homage to Nicholson’s father, Robert “Bob” Nicholson. An old photo of Bob, taken while he was mountaineering, was used for the album’s cover and inspired the artwork. Another picture of old goggles like the ones Bob wore appears inside the booklet, along with a couple of other old mountaineering photos.
“I’ve always wanted to do something to just tip my hat off to Dad, because he’s done a lot in his life, and he’s getting quite old now,” Nicholson explained. “He’s 87. He’s struggling a little bit with various things. And I kind of wanted to do something while he’s still with us, basically. And I just had a lot of ideas, lyrically, and sort of put them all together. I mean, these have been scraps of bits and bobs that were written over the years.”
The admiration Nicholson has for his father comes through resoundingly in the lyrics.
Whether work or pleasure it really doesn’t matter
You just keep on pushing till the job is done
Whilst others are scratching their heads you quietly solve it all
No fanfare, no fuss, just a perfect end result every time
No problem is too much, you always find a solution, you always find a way
A spitfire and a hurricane lovingly honed from solid oak
A skateboard that you made for me in the glorious Seventies
A go-cart with no brake, which gave me a bloody nose
Still you live and learn and what hurts only makes you stronger
Nods in the music to Nicholson’s dad include a jazzy section and an ending that walked right out of a smoky jazz lounge, which pay tribute to Bob’s love of Gene Krupa. There are also some industrial sounds of drills and saws blended in that represent Bob’s career as an engineer.
“I think we all started to get quite excited once Stuart had come up with the lyric content of the song,” Baker said. “We started to be able to focus on what it was about, with a lot of changes. It was really quite inspiring.”
It is the soaring, sweeping, progressive epic of the album, with a fantastic, sing-along chorus. For me, it stands among the great Galahad epics from throughout the band’s catalog. There’s another scorching Abraham guitar solo that wraps up just before the lounge-jazz end section.
“This song, actually, we kind of wrote it as a band, or we finished it as a band,” Nicholson said. “I mean, obviously me and Dean had the sketches, but there are additional sections that we put in in rehearsal before heading to the studio. And then we came up with a sort of jazzy ending, which was so appropriate because my dad — he didn't really like that much music, but he loved his jazz, especially traditional jazz.”
At the time of my chat with Nicholson and Baker, Bob had not yet heard all of the song that pays tribute to his life.
“I haven't played it fully to him, actually. I played him bits of it,” Nicholson said. “And I showed him the booklet and everything else, and he did show an interest, which is good. The trouble is his eyes aren’t brilliant and his hearing’s not very good at all, although he’s just had his hearing aids redone. He's going to come over at some point and have a listen to everything properly, so I’m waiting for that. But he was very interested in it, and in fact, he looked at the goggles on the artwork, and said, ‘Oh, they're my goggles.’ And they are exactly the same as the ones that he used when they were climbing in those days. You know, the older airplane kind. He even told me what the model number was, but I can't remember.”
The title track is my favorite on the album but it’s a matter of degrees, since The Last Great Adventurer is strong from start to finish.
The final two songs — the ‘bonus tracks,’ if you like — were written about specific people who Nicholson knows. The first of those, “Normality of Distance,” deals with picking up the pieces of a relationship
“It’s about a friend of mine who just went through a very, very difficult stage in her life,” Nicholson said. “It was quite difficult because I kind of knew both of the protagonists, and it was quite a difficult thing, but I knew who was right and who was wrong. And as time went on, you kind of gradually got to know what was going on, and it was a bit heart-wrenching at times to be perfectly honest. But it’s kind of all worked out in the end, and she’s fine, and he’s buggered off with someone else and he’s happy, so…”
Musically, “Normality of Distance” is a mid-tempo, acoustic-guitar driven song with big, sweeping keyboards in the choruses. As Nicholson described the situation above, the song has an uplifting ending.
And as the story unravelled
It all became so clear
I realised the normality of distance
Was just a paper-thin veneer
Cover-ups and excuses finally disappeared without trace
I can see the sparkle in your eyes again
And the tears of joy on your face
The final song on the CD and digital version is the emotionally crushing “Another Life Not Lived.” Pepper sketched out the music and recorded a demo for it years ago, and the band finished the song many years after his passing.
“Once (Pepper) found out his cancer was inoperable, I think he went through a phase where he wanted to write a song a day for a week and do five to seven different songs,” Baker said. “And that was one of those. That was one of those tracks he did. We put a couple on the (2012) Battle Scars album as well.”
The responsibility of finishing a song Pepper had started was a heavy one for the band. Pepper had laid down music for the song on bass, guitar, and keyboards and it was important to the rest of Galahad to properly honor him in the recording process.
“When it came to re-recording that song (from the demo), I think Lee (Abraham) felt the weight of that quite a lot,” Baker said. “I think he was really quite nervous about getting it right, because obviously on the original demo version, it was played by Neil. I was lucky, because I knew exactly what synthesizer Neil had used. So I got exactly the same sounds. We did try and just keep it as close as possible to the original instrumental that Neil had written.”
Apart from the somber knowledge that Pepper had written the song, the subject matter itself is devastatingly sad. “Another Life Not Lived” tells the story of a couple Nicholson knows who suffered the loss of their only son when he was still a teenager. The singer had some concerns about how writing a song about it would be received by his friends who had suffered such a tragedy.
“He didn't even get a chance to really live his life. He took his GCSEs (General Certificate of Secondary Education exams) and that was it,” Nicholson said. “You know, it’s so sad. I was concerned about how they might feel about me writing about it, but as it happens, it was fine, basically. It was kind of me putting myself in it, imagining how would you feel? I mean, it's an impossible situation.”
Tonally, the music and lyrics fit each other well. The tempo is slow and the music and vocals are hauntingly beautiful, matching the lyrics Nicholson wrote for it.
And as hope melts away
You try to raise yourself to face another day
Though the pain seems too much to bear
And nothing at this point in your life seems fair
And it’s not enough, it’s just not enough to know
That so many family and friends really care
It means nothing at all, nothing at all
When the centre of your world has been taken away so mercilessly
The instrumentation starts simply and builds without changing speeds, keeping its funereal soberness, before stripping away some of the sounds until it returns to the simple state that it opened with. But then, Galahad unexpectedly strips away even the simple music, until it’s only Nicholson’s solemn vocal carrying the song to its conclusion. That decision was brilliant and somehow adds even more weight to the song.
“It’s quite an unusual way of ending an album, but I think it works,” he said.
I couldn’t agree more.
This latest album might be my favorite from the band since Empires Never Last came out in 2007, although Galahad has turned out strong material between the two. There’s a lot to like for longtime Galahad fans, aficionados of other modern progressive rock, and even just regular old rock music lovers.
The Last Great Adventurer won’t be Galahad’s last great adventure. The band has been productive in the writing department and plans to release a follow-up before the end of 2023.
Find out more about Galahad at the band’s official website or on their Facebook page.
Tracklist:
Alive
Omega Lights
Blood, Skin and Bone
Enclosure 1764
The Last Great Adventurer
Normality of Distance
Another Life Not Lived
For my entire interview with Stuart Nicholson and Dean Baker of Galahad, check out the video below or download/stream Episode 93 of the Michael’s Record Collection podcast. The guys spoke about their first favorite record and their musical backgrounds and provided a lot more detail about the making of The Last Great Adventurer. They also mentioned that it won’t be another four years before we get another Galahad album, as a new one is in the works and is expected out this year!
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