Gallus, Oporto

Mere days after I was revelling in the buzz of Broadcast, Gallus brought a nugget of post-punk gold from Glasgow to Leeds. And as they were playing one of my favourite local venues in the West Yorkshire city — the cloakroom-sized Oporto — it was a no-brainer to grab a ticket.

The band was as impressively slick — after all, you’d expect that from a five-piece outfit that’s recently signed with Marshall Records, sold out King Tut’s and freshly conquered the stage at TRNSMT. Quaintly enough, too, their name’s one of those new-to-me Scottish terms I’m trying to weave into my vocabulary. And indeed, true to their title, they were bold.

gallus-oporto-leeds-september-record-weekly
Gallus, Oporto, Leeds, 21/09/21

Throughout their full set, there was angst — stacks of the stuff. Gallus have a brash blueprint and don’t operate quietly. From the roaring vocals and cheeky dance moves of Barry Dolan to the pretty experimental strumming techniques from both guitarists, there wasn’t a dull second. It was all suitably riotous and raucous, for which Oporto is used to applauding its on-stage frequenters, but it meant that the clean, sharp production on the studio versions of Gallus’ ’Perfect Ending’ and ‘Actual Factual’ were scuzzy and particularly smoking-hot when blared through massive amps. Of course, the major tunes, ‘Looking Like a Mess’ and ‘Marmalade’, were a joy to hear live as well.

gallus-oporto-gig-record-weekly
Gallus

They wheeled out their seriously strong catalogue of songs, then thankfully rounded off the show in ground-shaking style with my top track of choice, ‘What Do I Know’. What an absolute behemoth.

So, all in all, I’d get ready to hear much more from Gallus, if I were you…

gallus-leeds-gig-review-record-weekly
Gallus

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s