Philadelphia's Ron Gallo has a full and slightly forbidding Afro. In the grand tradition of The MC5 and At The Drive In. Their's is a musical seam he definitely mines as well, (lots of seventies New York Punk here also), all loose street, cocksure attitude, which goes back beyond these to the Bob Dylan of Subterranean Homesick Blues and sixties garage which are surely his original sources.
On his new album, the just released Heavy Meta, (geddit!), he makes a strong case for this stuff being as relevant now as it's ever been. Opening track Young Lady You're Scaring Me sets off with a riff that's pure Nuggets at which point Gallo releases a rock and roll howl that let's the listener know exactly where we all are if we weren't fairly sure already. If you have Richard Hell & the Voidoids, The Cramps or Mink De Ville in your collection, you're going to feel perfectly at home here.
If Gallo is somehow working from a similar template and set of ingredients to Courtney Barnett, (she made this kind of loose garage married to modern sentiment relevant again a few years back), he's is definitely an angrier, grittier Barnett, hailing from downtown rather than the suburbs, and emphasises his edge by adding a bit more blues to the mix than she ever did, some Jack White and some traces of Zep.
It's a record that's a bit pick and mix with regards to my personal tastes. Some tracks work better for me than others but Gallo is clearly a talent and Heavy Meta a record I'm sure to return to. For me he's at his best when he's either at his most punkish or at the opposite end of the spectrum at his most thoughtful and laying off the guitar heroics. The best song on here for my money is final track All The Punks Are Domesticated which I can't post a direct link to but which you can find here, which is pretty much a state of play address for where we find ourselves in 2017. The lyrics say much of what needs to be said!
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