Music is often described as “cinematic,” alluding perhaps to grand, orchestral, sweeping, wide-screen sounds to match the action of the film format. With his latest The Mining Co. album, Classic Monsters, Michael Gallagher takes that idea even further. Not only does the music here feel like a modern take on the soundtrack to a black-and-white horror movie, but the songs often seem like plot lines and narratives in their own right.
And where the form and the function come together best is in the spaciousness and often monochrome reflections in the music; it is music which echoes early movie soundtracks – the frantic piano through-line of opener “Failure,” the buoyant and lilting sense of movement in “Killer Sun,” the creeping darkness of “Salem”- but also explores modern, filmic music too.
The album also does that thing that all great albums do: It follows a sequence, takes the listener on a sonic journey, takes us by the hand through darkness and danger, evades nightmares and monsters, plunges us into the terror of the unknown, and the unimagined and ends at “The Planetarium,” a song that imagines two stoned lovers looking at the painted stars above them and dreaming of the future.
Michael Gallagher never fails to beguile, and The Mining Co. is a perfect vehicle for looking at the past and reinventing it for the future, for taking timeless themes and readdressing them for a new audience. But more than that, through it, he continues to make touching, tender, optimistic, and joyous music. And what more could you want than that?
