It is no cliche to say that music, and especially the making of it, has therapeutic and healing qualities. And so it is with Ed Galli, who took up the guitar to help him through a difficult part of his life and found that he was quite good at songwriting. Make that pretty great, as his latest single, “Out of the Shade,” testifies.
If you are looking for a loose term to tag the song with, “singer-songwriter” is as good as any, but as we all know, that is such a broad term, so much so that it doesn’t mean anything, not really. Also, any song found in such a realm is all about those additional sounds and sonics rather than the things that make it singer-songwriter-y, such as the lilting acoustic guitars and the warm vocals that lay at its heart.
And so, he undercuts the song with a gorgeous and gorgeously understated cello, the sort of thing that would sound right at home on a Damien Rice track. He adds some lovely, liquid sonics around the edges and just the right amount of additional harmonies, delivering a song about the timing of love and relationships and the difficulty therein.
The more I play the song, the more I realize that Damien Rice is, in fact, a very good reference point, and in my world, if you are doing anything in the pop-folk-acoustic world, that is about the best comparison you could ask for.
Not quite the new Damien Rice, at least not yet, but certainly an artist to keep an eye on.
