A Discussion With Gal Gracen
I met Patrick Geraghty outside the Federal Store in Mount Pleasant on a beautiful early-Autumn afternoon. It was one of those nice Friday afternoons when you know the work week is over and you’ve got the weekend laid out in front of you. Patrick and I sat down to chat about the new Gal Gracen album, Fantasy Gardens. We also talked a bit about the neighbourhood and the realities of trying to make a living in Vancouver.
“This neighbourhood has changed a lot in the last few years,” Patrick said, as we looked out on a sunny Quebec St, “and the things that were initially a huge part of my lifestyle here have kind of eroded and disappeared. I’m just trying to stay functional and affordable and it’s not always easy but at least I still have a home. The rent is pretty good.”
Patrick grew up in West Vancouver and has been playing music since he was a kid. He sang in boys’ choir, played in bands throughout high school, and started playing in the Vancouver scene around 2006-2007. He was in a prog rock punk band called Role Mach that lasted for 6-7 years. Some of the songs on Fantasy Gardens were originally written for Role Mach. And his current keyboardist, Liz Horner, was a member of Role Mach too.
Fantasy Gardens was named after a now-demolished amusement park in Richmond. Throughout the 90s it had been used as a setting for TV and movies, including The X Files and Supernatural.
“It’s a place I used to go when I was a kid,” Patrick said, “and I have some nostalgia for. I have really fond memories of it. I feel like the title of the album is a little bit generic but I couldn't resist, because it kind of sums up a certain state of mind that is pervasive throughout the whole album, which is this idea of something that is nostalgic on its own quaints and has its own niche beauty to it but also was involved in a huge political scandal. And is part of a whole process of weird signage and simulacra. And it has a super tainted legacy of corruption. Now it’s a Loblaw’s and a bunch of condos. And to me that’s the story of Vancouver and BC real estate and my experience of living in Vancouver.”
The new album is a whirlwind of influences and muses, from composer Carl Orff to 80s and 90s new age like Enya to Gheorghe Zamfir, the master of the pan flute. It’s a trip through the rabbit hole of Geraghty’s musical consciousness. It was a project that spanned a decade of his life and was recorded in the various places he lived during that time, including Vancouver, Victoria, Vietnam, Bornea, and Malaysia. The finished product sounds as diverse as it’s setting. Whether it’s pan flutes or extended clarinet solos or bird sounds and bells, the sonic palette of this album is vast.
Check it out the album now on Bandcamp.