After releasing two albums and doing his share of touring,
Ron Gallo has clearly learned a few things about the music business, and some of them are pretty funny.
Gallo and his band (also known as
Ron Gallo) have chosen to share some of these valuable lessons, and 2018's Really Nice Guys is a biting and witty eight-song EP about some of the pitfalls of the musician's life. In the title track,
Gallo confronts the dilemma faced by nearly everyone who has been in a band -- what are you supposed to do about your musician friends who are fine people but woefully untalented? In "I'm on the Guestlist," he imagines himself as a too-cool-for-school muso who is happy to see other struggling musicians play, as long as he doesn't have to pay for the privilege. On these two numbers,
Gallo and his band (bassist
Joe Bisirri and drummer
Dylan Sevey) connect in terms of both music and humor, and "The East Nashville Kroger Conversation" is a spoken word skit that re-creates a remarkably cliché-ridden chat between two singer/songwriters who bump into each other while buying groceries. Elsewhere, the EP isn't quite as strong, but "YouTubular" is a nice surf music pastiche, "Emotional Impact for Sale" is a dreamy pop tune with fine harmonies, and "Related Artists (For Fans Of...)" is a short but funny bit of punk ranting. Oddly enough, the EP is at its weakest at the beginning and the end -- the opener "Rough Mix" is over before it really has a chance to sink in, and "Pull Quote" is a hard rock guitar workout fogged by the presence of a sleazy industry type who talks over the whole thing. Still, there's more to like than not on Really Nice Guys, and the best stuff suggests
Ron Gallo is having no problems working up material for his (or their) next album. ~ Mark Deming