The wait is over! We’ve had “Beautiful Mess” Volume 1 since the 21st day of the 21st year of the 21st Century. Now the second volume of gilli moon’s double-album release is finally available through streaming platforms, online stores, etc!
- Starlight: A Kylie Minogue-styled pop anthem, complete with synthesised vocal effects and employing some incredible production values. Let’s play “pick the single” or, at least, dance-floor filler! Another, out of context, I wouldn’t pick as a gilli moon track!
- Fill You Up: Another dance track in Meresha-style featuring a guest guitarist and a sigh (of relief?) at the very, very end.
- Chemistry: Released in Sep 2019 as a stand-alone single, dance slower and closer to your chosen partner to this one. Love that channel-swap with the keys!
- The Light: Love the heavier bottom-end to this slower ballad that builds to a crescendo through the middle-8 and a nicely interwoven finish with harmonics on the actual-bass and carefully chosen piano-notes.
- Thunder: I called it on the covers last time but missed Issues as the second cover on Vol1. This is the first of two covers on Vol2: if you don’t recognise this Imagine Dragons track you have been seriously living under a rock! gilli has put her mark on this one while retaining some of the magic of the original.
- Room for Love: A MUSE-inspired opening to another bass-driven dance anthem.
- Falling for You: Another dance number in another style again. A DJ could rightfully program this whole disc for their set with inbuilt chill/debrief/rebrief sessions!
- I Wanna Love: This one rekindles gilli’s own pop-style from earlier outings. I even had to go back to her earlier releases to check … nope, just reviving an old muse!
- All Night Long (Cover No.2): My brain first went to the Joe Walsh favourite but then I realised it could only be Lionel Richie’s hit. Oh and wow, what a version this one is! Nowhere near the original but you catch on soon enough! “oo-woot oo-woot!”
- Ambiguity: Here we have the lady at her piano and someone with a Fender Twin Reverb (effect), but true to form, it bursts out as something else again. This is a funk rocker like nothing before! I want to nominate it as a single …
- Fairytale: Now here’s something you don’t hear on a pop record anymore: Indian / Eastern tablas! Another rocker with a slower swing-tempo to go with the heat of the subject matter!
- Everything’ll be OK: a ukulele-based ditty to close the official album that sounds so achingly familiar! With that baby-gurgling at the end, and the “soon we’ll be a family of four” line, this is a song of reassurance that all will be right with the world; that you will be able to face whatever challenges life throws out.
- A bonus track for gilli’s music-club members only, and a collab just like she did with CaiNo on Vol.1 and J.Walker in September 2015, but not in any way similar to those songs! Not only does music club membership get you extra stuff like this, but 95% discount off merchandise is another of the bonuses of being a member. It’s seriously worth looking into if you enjoyed these last two records, and a great way to support an independent artist, apart from buying her music.
So there you have it. gilli moon’s “Beautiful Mess” Volume 1 and 2 are available for your listening and/or purchasing pleasure and I can’t recommend either and/or both of them highly enough. Thank you for the music, gilli, as always! Truly, nothing messy about any of these records!!
| < < < A Retrospective | < < The Wait | < Volume 1 |