Galley Beggar’s 4th Album (CD, Digital and Limited Edition Vinyl Releases).
Digital: iTunes / Amazon

Track Listing:

1. Salome
2. Four Birds
3. The Girl I Left Behind Me
4. The Lake
5. Lorelei
6. Moon and Tide
7. Let No Man Steal Your Thyme
8. My Return

To reduce Galley Beggar’s allure down to a simple matter of folk rock revivalism would be foolish. With a sound that incorporates all manner of unexpected elements while always celebrating the mischievous spirit of folk music across the centuries, these Kentish chameleons have been steadily earning a formidable reputation since forming back in 2009. Over the course of three acclaimed albums – Reformation House (2010), Galley Beggar (2012) and Silence & Tears (2014), the band’s first for Rise Above Records – Galley Beggar have pulled off the neat trick of simultaneously honouring and upgrading the psychedelic folk rock template, both reveling in the simple magic of acoustic instrumentation and joyfully harnessing the lysergic power of the electric too. And now they are poised to release their fourth and finest album, Heathen Hymns. A dizzying blend of the traditional and the untried, it’s a record full of absorbing musical stories that showcase a newfound lust for experimentation.

For all its many detours down psychedelic rabbit warrens and shadowy, fog-shrouded footpaths, Heathen Hymns is still an album with melody and humanity at its core. Fresh originals like the hypnotic “Four Birds” and the woozy raga rock of “Moon & Tide” wield an insidious charisma, but it’s the way Galley Beggar’s collective ingenuity collides with the sacrosanct likes of traditional standards “Let No Man Steal Your Thyme” [here featuring a guest vocal from Celia Drummond of UK acid folk legends Trees] and “The Girl I Left Behind Me” that confirms this album as both an unequivocal triumph for creativity and a platinum-plated treasure trove for aficionados everywhere.

2016 was a relatively quiet year for Galley Beggar but as Heathen Hymns begins to cast its spell on the psychedelic (and not so psychedelic) hordes, it seems that Maria and her comrades are ready, willing and eager to hit the road and share these new bursts of dazzling sonic light with the masses.