The Mining Co.
Gum Card
PinDrop Records
3 March 2023
With “Gum Card”, The Mining Co’s fifth album, Michael Gallagher returns to his normal haunts of folk, Americana and country while also illustrating that the path less taken is where the magic lies.
You have to feel for Michael Gallagher. Trading as The Mining Co., Gum Card is his fifth album. Yet, if you’ve spent any time researching him on Google, he almost doesn’t exist. He is a willful musician who does what he wants, following where his muse leads. With Phenomenology, he explored electronica dealing with sci-fi concepts. Although Gum Card would seem like more of a return to his normal haunts of folk, Americana and country, he still hews a path less traveled, eschewing the main road because the unbeaten paths seem more interesting.
By not following the highway, you accept a different set of rules. “Wake Up” begins not with Gallagher singing but his wife, Julie. While the opening guitar notes are clearly in a folk vein, when her voice comes in, the song begins to echo musically and vocally, pulling sounds in directions unbridled by the traditions of folk. The song haunts as it deals with Gallagher’s fear of hospitals, needles and bouts of fainting.
Again and again, Gallagher avoids the obvious, as if they are areas not worth looking at, like on “Primary,” where he finds a way to avoid singing the blues. The song’s chorus makes it abundantly clear, “We don’t play the blues/ We don’t sing the blues/ We don’t like the blues.” There’s a twang to his voice, yet he sings in a countryfied motif just to make it clear that he will not pay any homage to that particular art form.
While Gallagher plays with the framework of folk, he seems to spend a good deal of time working from a paint box that colours things a bit differently. “Shallow Stream” feels more like a twisted samba with bass and piano framing the colors that he sings over while telling the tale of getting a hook caught in his father’s hand on a fishing trip. And he has plenty to say on “New Bohemians,” taking aim at the banality of artists who put style ahead of content.
While the kinds of cards one collects may vary, the moments that matter are still the same, which is what makes the song “Gum Card” so compelling. There is something totally magical about the moment of opening the packet of cards and shuffling the deck to see if you’ve finally gotten ahold of that one mystical rare card. Gallagher still trawls the internet trying to find them. Almost Beatlesque, the song shifts gears like something born of the Magical Mystery Tour.
Parents can be amazing people, but not always in good ways. “Limits” sets up children on the road to failure. The song bounces along while Julie Gallagher sings sweetly about the notion heard all too often, “Know your limits, you’ll never get far.” Yet, in a world of dreamers, knowing your limits condemns one to never trying to see how far they actually can go. Hearing that message, either in the voice of the singer or his synthesized voice, is a path Gallagher doesn’t want us to take.
From songs about wanting to leave London to others about speaking to his wife after a major operation, Gallagher finds the transformative material, those pieces that not only bring his songs to life but reveal the humanity that lives inside us and makes us strive for something better. With “Gum Card”, The Mining Co. illustrate that the path less taken is where the magic lies.
Gum Card is due for release on 3rd March 2023.
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