We caught up with Gianluca Bernacchi; guitar player for Gallus to chat about the importance of community, danger mouse, their new album and upcoming tour including their biggest yet hometown show at the Glasgow Arts school.
Tanita: You just released a new single, “MK Des” Can you tell us about this?
Gianluca: We’re very glad to be having a new album and new music coming out. MK Des…I suppose when you write it down, and word what it’s about with the decline of the city and the nightlife, it feels a bit more somber and sadder then I think the song actually is but I think it’s a big nonsense party riff rock song kind of thing, Barry’s got good vocals on it and it’s got a very fun mischievous sort of deal to it. It’s named after a guy we met when we were recording the first album in Milton Keynes…with Marshall, we went out one night, the studio closes at six and there’s only thing to do, so we’d go to the pub until we had to be back in the studio the next morning and we met this guy at the pub who said he was from Killmarnock but sounded like he was from Milton Keynes, he was older then us and his nephew was there, he just kept buying us drinks all night and we were like “Awh man, you should let us buy you a drink” and he was like (imitating him) “No man… its alright.” We ended up going back to his house, through this big lane and his wife was watching us through the window, shaking her head like “No again Des! No again.” and I feel like he’s now living vicariously through us a little bit. We’ve emailed him since but he’s not replied. That was like three years ago now…
Tanita: We’ve got to go find him! We’ve got to go to Milton Keynes and find him!
Gianluca: I know! I think I can remember where he stays… it’s about a fifteen minute walk from the centre. (laughs)
Tanita: What a legend! He’s inspired a song! Do you think he has any idea?
Gianluca: Not a clue! I think we would have heard something by now…It’s been a few weeks. Hope he’s okay…
Tanita: Same! The song is from the new album “Life Is Bliss” which is out on the 25th of September! Can you tell us about the inspiration and meaning behind the album and it’s name!
Gianluca: So we wrote this album in three weeks at the start of January, but coming into it we were like, right, we’ve got a month or whatever and we need to write a new album, and we go into our own studio space, and we’re there like Monday to Friday, 10 am until 11 pm every day, and the idea was, let’s just do what’s in front of us; there’s a ban on old ideas; it has to be new and in the moment. We ended up writing about twenty songs and whittled it down to the best twelve. It was just kind of what we were seeing in front of us; our studio was right in the centre of Glasgow, it’s underneath the Kingston Bridge, and we’re travelling in from the South and North of Glasgow, and we’re coming in, and you just see kind of the current state of Glasgow and the current state of things, and it’s very hard to ignore. The album finishes on a song called “M8”, and it’s basically just pure social vandalism; it was terrible for communities and disrupted a lot of people. It was New Years’ and just before we started writing the album, I was at a party and a friend showed me this article “The Bell” in Glasgow put out, about these two pals they used to be best friends when they were ten or eleven years old and then they all got displaced for the building of the M8, they didn’t see each other for fifty years and now they’re reunited in their sixties and they only moved less then a kilometer away from each other but because of the way that worked and the massive figure in the middle of the city, they didn’t see each other for fifty years and I thought how many more times has that happened, must have happened countless times, but these guys survived long enough to re-meet luckily enough and there are good journalists documenting stuff like that and I was quite moved by that. Especially because our city was immediately underneath the M8 and it’s really imposing it’s a really tall bridge which is really imposing. “Life is Bliss” though… it comes from a song called “Donnie Murdo” which has lyrics in it: “Eyes are burning, life is bliss.” It’s one of those that go re-jigged a few times; it’s not really about much, it’s kind of a stream of consciousness. “Donnie Murdo” itself, though- the name “Donnie Murdo”- when you had children’s TV in Gaelic-speaking communities, such as CBBC, you would change “Basil Brush” to its actual translation in Gaelic, and you could do it with lots of cartoons. With “Danger Mouse“, though he’d have a big “DM” on the front of his costume, you can’t dub over that, so they just called him “Donnie Murdo“, which we thought was class. (laughs)
Tanita: That is class! I’m Irish, so hard relate! This is your second album. You’ve already released a first album and an E.P. Can you talk about how your creative process may have changed for this new album, and how have you evolved into this current era of Gallus?
Gianluca: With the first album, there was a few line up changes, I joined during the making of the first album, you still had Barry, Paul and Eamon, then I joined during the making of that album and a year later we’d Matthew join us on bass and we took a year to really settle in with each other and then the thing that changed most is we got our own studio space and we found in that space there was very little time pressure and very little outward pressures, as soon as you go into this room with no windows we’re like right we can just do what we want, that’s the thing that’s changed, we’ve got a good recording set up and a decent space to make it and do what we want, the process really has become more collaborative because of that and you can say when we were doing the writing for this album, the room was set up into stations, the drums always mic’d up, a vocal station, two guitar stations and a bass station, and we’d come in and everyone would go to their station, sit down and fire things off from each other, it’s become much more fluid and I think that’s how we were able to get this album done in as quick a time as we did. There was very little room for, when sometimes you write a song in a room, and you can forget it. I’m mad at the recording, and everything was recorded, so we had something we could go back and pick apart. So when it came to recording later on, we knew exactly what we were gonna do.
Tanita: Love that! It sounds very experimental and in the moment. Do you feel there’s a musical experiment you made that really paid off?
Gianluca: A few things…I suppose, the song “M8” itself when Eamon came in, he was a bit later that day and we were by ourselves and he was like what if we have a song that goes nowhere with just constant building tension, so the song itself Paul plays on the drums the same beat for about four and a half minutes but just with a rising intensity (mimics drum playing) and we’re doing the same thing over and over again and it does break tension a little bit but never enough to be like a proper release, it was good to have and when we told everyone about it, everyone was up for it but when we texted Barry about the idea for the song, to see about some lyrics, he was in Gronogan with our manager at Eurosonic and he was like “I don’t think people will get about the M8. I don’t even drive, I don’t even know what I can do” and I was like “Barry it’s not about being in a traffic jam!” (laughs) So yeah, I think the song “M8” I’m very proud of that- maybe the song “Alert Alert” also; there’s a lot of harmonies and things I’ve never done before. We’ve been quite brave about a lot of things and threw them to the wind. With all these harmonies, we think, “How are you going to do a four-part harmony live?” Well… we’re just going to have to do it!
Tanita: Is there any band lore you want to talk about, and maybe about how you came up with the band name Gallus?
Gianluca: So, according to the lore, I wasn’t there, but (laughs) so Barry, Eamon and Paul used to drink in a pub called “Gallus” in the West End, and they just got the name from there. They used to go there because they went to uni up that neck of the woods, so I think it just comes from drinking in that pub, really. I think we’ve asked them a few times about gigging in there, but I don’t think they’re up for it. We’re up for it; it’s so small, but I don’t think they’re up for it, which is a shame.
Tanita: We’ll start a petition! We’ll get you there!
Gianluca: We’ll just tell them…don’t worry it won’t cost you any money! We’ll bring people in on a Wednesday night…It’ll be fine. (laughs)
Tanita: It needs to happen! Is there a song from the new album that’s a favorite for you or is there one in particular that you’re most looking forward to performing live?
Gianluca: We’ve been in a process for the last few weeks…as the tour starts in a few weeks, we start with the “in stores” and then the UK tour in October, but we’ve been in the process of getting the album up to live-playing standards. It’s been really fun, and I’d say for me there’s a song called “Better Than Nothing“, the second track on the album; it’s very exciting, it’s kind of groovy and kind of heavy. It kind of reminds me of “Only Revolutions” by Biffy Clyro. The verses are odd, and one thing we did was we wrote the album the way we did; in terms of us, we were sat in front of Ableton and the computer we were able to go through it bit by bit. Me and Eamon were very much like trim all the fat, no point in fat and things shouldn’t be there to serve a purpose and it’s like our problem was with ‘verse twos’ of songs, you get to the second verse and it needs to be different, so there’s all these little one off things with the bass and guitars and rhythms that only happen once and with when you’re trying to learn it that doesn’t make sense, you have a stretch of fourty seconds that’s completely different. We’re not writing sheet music, so yeah, it’s been a bit of an issue, but it’s coming together really nicely, and all that coming together now, we’re like, “ah, that’s really good” and “Better Than Nothing” is a real good example of how we’ve all had too much free will……A reckless use of free will!
Tanita: That’s a good title! Maybe for the next album…
Gianluca: Nah because we’re talking repetitions and complete free will here…
Tanita: Got you! You’ve also got your biggest hometown show coming up at the Glasgow Arts school, what does this mean to you?
Gianluca: It’s very fitting with the themes of the album, with the impact on communities and the impact on general life that we’ve ended up talking about. The Arts School was burnt down twice it’s been a terrible thing for Sauchiehall Street, the street in Glasgow where there were loads of venues back when we were coming up in 2015 and 2016. We knew everyone on that street, all the people our age and all that, and it was a very thriving street at that time, and a big part of that was the venues that were there, including the ABC, which has been gone for a long time now. Our manager had a pub called “The Priory“; it was essentially the “Ceebee Geebees” of Glasgow. He started that with Johnny Madden out of Baby Strange and Gary Watson– God rest him- from The Lapelles. It was their idea to run a monthly and it ended up being twice a month club called “Club Sabbath“, and that really lit a fuse under the scene. People started coming up, and it became really good; people from all over the UK and Europe started to attend. There’s a VICE article written on The Priory as well; it was really, really special… and to see that die away from fires and council mismanagement…
When you go up Sauchiehall Street now, there are a couple of places left, but it’s not the original bit of chaos it used to be; there are some people doing good work. The fact that the arts school is now open- it’s been open for about a year now. Love that venue, and it’s good to bring that home to that part of the city now as well. It feels good. It’s quite important.
Tanita: Definitely! I’d no idea The Arts school had previously burned down twice!
Gianluca: Yeah, the Arts school burned down twice. Lots of buildings go on fire in Glasgow these days; it’s a bit odd. We had Central Station burned down too. That was right in the middle of us doing the recording for the album. We did the actual recording from Wednesday to Wednesday, and that happened on the Sunday. We were on the east end of Glasgow at that point we were just looking up out a window up a tall building on the fourty five a side, we just looked out the window and we were thinking “what is going on?” there was smoke everywhere and then we realised when we looked out it was burned down to the ground, it was terrible, absolutely terrible. It’s right in the middle of Glasgow- Central Station; you walk past that wherever you’re coming from…you walk past that station; so many people pass through. You never really look up; there are shadows in the way, and there’s an emptiness now; it’s weird.
Tanita: Yeah I love Glasgow and that station, I went a few years ago and it was so beautiful…
Gianluca: It’s stunning but it was so shocking, the couple weeks afterwards, the station opened up partially and the light was so different, it was brighter because of and what burned down its been a bit weird ever since.
Tanita: I can imagine… In terms of touring, is there any tour essentials or must haves for maximum comfort on the road?
Gianluca: There is “prepared for no comfort” and that will be the most comforting thing of all. We do okay, we’re not doing too bad. I’d say just eat as well as you can, don’t eat at service stations, it’s too expensive, stock up. Get a gym membership, if touring in the UK, one that encompasses lots, even if you don’t exercise-which always helps, but you can most likely get washed at one. So if you’re on the road for hours and you feel groggy or you don’t have a hotel or a room to go to at least you can get a wash there. Electrolytes….we’re all thirty or thirty one now…
Tanita: I hear ya!
Gianluca: We can feel the strain! One thing that doesn’t work is mad foot exercises. It doesn’t really affect me or Paul because we’re always the ones driving but for the rest of them… The rest of them and us sometimes- we’re sitting in the van upright for eleven or twelve hours and we’re trying to find ways to keep the blood flowing but we haven’t found anything that works yet so let us know!
Tanita: Let me know also please! Good shout about the gym membership. Do you have a favourite performance you’ve done so far? Or a dream venue or place you’d like to perform?
Gianluca: There’s one that we always talk about… what had been amazing, what we had done and that. There was one festival we played in Belgium, a place called “Rock Olmen” we turned up, we were looking at this place and it was really in the middle of nowhere in this little village… we drive in and we were like “this is really nice” it was a small suburb and we turn up and we have no information just a time and an address, and they’re like “You’re headlining the second stage”. There’s only two stages so everyone is going to be here and there’s like three thousand Belgian folk that didn’t really know who we were but were absolutely up for it which was special and really fun. God bless, though, because we came from London and got the boat straight over. We had slept only for a few hours, we got the boat over really early; we were starving when we got there, and they had a nice bit of dinner for us. Eamon ate too much and was comatose about five minutes before we went on stage; we dragged him on stage, and he performed perfectly for an hour, came off and immediately went asleep for twenty minutes and was up the rest of the night! That Rock Olmen, that was fantastic, it almost felt like…do you ever see footage of bands headlining old festivals in the nineties, bizarre festivals….? It had the absolute vibe of that, the lights were quite old and it was brilliant, it was really really good!
Tanita: Sounds so fun!
Gianluca: Venue we’d like to play… we’ve played The Barrowlands at the Tenement trail last year, that was fantastic and people always say that but it’s the smaller venues we love, it really is and we’re returning to “Nice and Sleezys” in Glasgow and earlier this year we played in The Brazen Head a pub just the south of the river, I don’t think they’ve had an electric band in there since the mid 2000s, we said “Don’t worry we wont charge you anything, we’re not looking for a fee and we’ll bring our own equipment and PA and pack this place out on a random Wednesday night” so they said “Ai, up for it” and let us do what we wanted and we charged one pound a ticket, it was brilliant! It was great!
Tanita: Amazing, yeah small intimate shows are always more special for sure…
Gianluca: Yeah I prefer them! I prefer the heat and the lights!
Tanita: Definitely! I haven’t managed to see you perform live yet… but definitely in the future would love to! How would you describe a live Gallus show for someone who hasn’t seen you live yet?
Gianluca: What we try to go for now is more relentless; we like to try to play all the songs we can, as fast as we can, with very little breathing space. Our lead singer, Barry, is very theatrical; he trained as an actor, so he’s entertaining. The rest of us are just sweaty nutters; it’s fun, and it’s a place to let go and leave troubles at the door. This is why we do it, to form an escape. Now we’ve done it for years and years and years, and we hope we can bring a bit of levity to people’s day-to-day if they come and see us.
Tanita: Amazing, that’s lovely! You’ve done some really cool tours and collabs already but do you have a dream musical collaboration or a dream co-headline tour you’d like to do?
Gianluca: A co-headline would be cool….We supported Heavy Lungs and Therapy a few years ago. We grew up listening to them and absolutely love them. I suppose if we were gonna go out now with a band, it would be a dream. It doesn’t matter if the band are monstrously bigger than we are; it’s still a co-headline… I’d say… The Hives, we’d love to go on tour with them…they’re one of our absolute favourites. I think if we were collaborating on a song, we would work well together too.
Tanita: Manifesting!
(Both of our fingers are crossed.)
Tanita: Who would your other musical influences be?
Gianluca: I’d say it’s all quite different for everyone; we all grew up listening to different things. On this album, we were all locked into the same influences: a lot of 90s music, a band called Soul Coughing and, funnily enough, Smash Mouth-the sound of their records is fantastic. We had a lot of 90s influence and a modern band called Dazy; it’s that kind of mid-tempo. The only way I can describe it is American young movie rock stuff, pre-millennium colourful melodic sort of American stuff. I think that’s really where we were taking a lot of inspiration from this time around anyway; that’s been the guiding light for all of this album.
Tanita: Where does the imagery for your music videos and album artwork come from and what’s the inspiration behind it and how do you make these come alive?
Gianluca: So I think we’re more interested in a good photograph than a good painting. All of our artwork for the last three and a bit years has always been a photograph or a manipulated photograph. The first album was the flooded football pitch with the Highrise behind it…not too far from me now actually. A guy called Jeff Pitcher took photos of us. We prefer pictures, with this album Eamon knew he wanted it to be immediately, the big famous tree of Finnieston Nash which is the big famous tree in Finnieston which is around the corner from our studio, we tired a few times to take pictures of it and it was very difficult, we’re not trained photographers, we got our good friend Marco, to come and take some shots and I think he showed us about thirty five images of the tree all slightly different and it took us five seconds to pick out the one, we were like “right this is the one”, because it’s exactly what we had in our heads… it’s real but it’s a bit messed up, its over exposed at some points, there’s grain and this and that. It’s the natural world but it’s real and urban… It’s what we see every day. We want it to be real. There’s not too much fantastical stuff. We wanted it to be a real picture of real things. Maybe that will be the theme going forward: all our album covers will all be famous places in Glasgow, but with blue sky on it!
Tanita: As a photographer I can relate to that! Can you talk a bit about the cover you created of the song “Letter For America” by The Proclaimers?
Gianluca: Yeah, so I mean it was like, the World Cup was coming up, and we wanted to do something for Scotland because Scotland’s in the World Cup, but we didn’t want to do a mad twee cover of, like Oh Bonnie… (starts singing) That’s not really us, but we thought “Letter For America” is a protest song about policies forcing people to move in the 80’s all the way to America and abandon places. I must call it out and say we do not agree with The Proclaimers and their recent outburst, but the song’s good!
Tanita: If you had to say Gallus and your music stood for one thing, what would it be?
Gianluca: Having a good time. Escapism. As simple as that.
Tanita: Awesome! What have the highlights of being in Gallus been for you so far?
Gianluca: Getting to make things on our own terms, getting to go into our studio and being in control of everything, and having the space and the freedom for all of us to play music together. Not everyone has the good opportunities we’ve had and for us five to go in a room and have rehearsing sessions, let alone going and getting to play gigs. That’s the beautiful thing; that’s what I like, I think we all would agree with that. We’ve been afforded great opportunities and they’ve afforded us to go and make music ourselves and were not really beholden to anyone; we get to just go and do what we like, which is nice.
Tanita: What does the future hold for Gallus?
We just want to keep at it and make more and more music. Now we’ve got a good way of working…hopefully it wont be three years until the next album comes out! We want to just roll them out and keep making music, because we’re just having a good time. We’ve got the “Instore” shows and the UK tour, you can find it all on our socials! We’ll be doing a lot more next year also moving forward and we’ll be keeping at it!
