“Trip to Rome” It is the first reference of the workshop and the title could not be more explicit, since its twelve songs narrate the journey that takes the album’s protagonists from Bilbao to the Italian capital. Conceived as a sung novel, each of the cuts would be a chapter, with its plot line perfectly outlined. Melancholic melodies, electro-acoustic instrumentation, a voice with personality and a quite classic sound, in line with that of his countrymen from McEnroe, whom we could cite as one of his most recognizable influences, as well as mentors and friends, as they have shared the stage in several occasions.
The album opens with the canonical The Reason, in which Mario marks ground and allows himself some Morrissey-esque inflections, although adapting them perfectly to his timbre of voice. The song also functions as a plot introduction to the work, and in the next one, Bilbao – Florence, the journey that will take its protagonists to the eternal city begins. The Biscayans advance along their route gently, with a musically languid tone over which the texts and history gain importance. Clean guitars and the elegance of the piano almost always prevail. Sometimes they quicken their pace, as they do in the trotting rhythm of Entry into Rome, but most of the time they opt for evocative mid-tempos.
It is a long album (twelve songs, sixty-five minutes), quite an anomaly in these times of fleeting listening. Although the group can boast a very characteristic style, it also has its resources to offer variety without losing coherence: thus, Vía Merulana begins with a suggestive instrumental nudity, while Cena en Luzzi sounds much more resounding. Muriola, the song that, with its six and a half minutes, closes the album and serves as its denouement, could be a good musical and conceptual summary of what Galerna seems to offer in this debut. “I see beauty in the useless,” they sing in this last cut. Always welcome are all those who seek beauty; especially when, as is the case, they manage to find it and show it to others.