Rising Los Angeles-based trio Gal Pal — Emelia Austin (she/her), Shayna Hahn (she/her) and Nico Romero (he/him) — can trace their origins back to a serendipitous meeting in college: The members of the band lived in the same dorm and on the same floor. Each member was drawn to to other by a sense of shared ambition and a desire to play music in a way that felt nonjudgmental and generative. Their initial collaborations were improvisatory, long-winded and playful — and featured recently purchased equipment, including a drum kit no one yet knew how to play. “We were learning our instruments together,” Gal Pal’s Nico Romero says. “The project started from wanting to learn how to play an write songs with other people.”
Earlier this year, the trio released “Mirror,” track that was written from an altered creative process — perhaps born out of necessity: Austin, Hahn and Romero experimented with writing in isolation, crafting songs with lyrics on their own before bringing them to the group. Featuring production assistance from Danny Noguieras and Sami Perez, the new single is also a bold step forward sonically for the band: Centered around an intricate, looping guitar riff, skittering drum patterns paired with Austin’s plaintive wailing “Mirror” is a shoegazey take on post punk that evokes both the sensation of being hopelessly stuck in a repetitive, dysfunctional pattern — and the slow-burning sense of dread, because there’s the acknowledgement of being stuck, and not knowing how to get out of a hellish loop.
Gal Pal’s Emelia Austin explained that the song ““formed from Nico playing cyclical guitar riffs over and over again. It helped me form the theme of being stuck in a pattern. I then wrote lyrics that were cut-off sentences, repeating again and again to express that feeling. For me, ‘Mirror’ is about the ways we allow our identities to be misshaped by people in our lives, how we are used as reflections for others, and the anxiety over being able to control it or not.”
Today, the rising Los Angeles-based trio announced that their new album This and Other Gestures is slated for a June 2, 2023 release. Marking their first album in six years, This and Other Gestures sees the trio now in their mid-20s and working through gender dysphoria, personal loss and the power and confusion of young adulthood. “These songs are very personal to us,” Gal Pal’s Austin explains. “We’re telling stories about different things — life, death, love, grief — all these things we’re going through and growing out of. These songs are about us processing change. Is it good, is it bad? We’re grieving, we’re celebrating.”
The album’s latest single “Angel In The Flesh” is a rousingly anthemic and swooning song that sonically is one part 120 Minutes-era MTV alt rock and late ’90s-early ’00s pop punk/emo built around buzzing power chords, thunderous drumming. enormous shout-along worthy hooks and choruses, paired with heart-worn-on-sleeve lyricism. Ultimately, the song is a sweet declaration of love, full of the sort of bravery, vulnerability and longing that’s free of the cynicism and despair of bitter experience.
“I grew up listening to a lot of pop punk and emo bands,” Gal Pal’s Nic Romero says in press notes. “I was a big fan of labels like Fueled By Ramen and Decaydance as a kid. I think this song definitely comes from that background a bit. It’s easy for me to want to sing about crushes and longing because it’s a fun feeling to indulge in and romanticize, even when it hurts.”
Directed by Ashley Kron, the accompanying video for “Angel In The Flesh” sees the band playing a dysfunctional TV sitcom family that manages to forget their dog’s birthday. The dog decides to run away — but bonds with his family when they attack a mailman to prove their love.