Tracklist

1. My Blistering Mind 
2. The Mandatory Prize
3. Never Really Felt Like Home (instrumental) 
4. Smile, Smile, Smile 
5. Intermission (instrumental)
6. Parallel Lives
7. Eversion 
8. Pretty Blue Fox (instrumental)
9. Just Another Thing
10. Dropping The Mask (instrumental)
11. Just Hold On 

About a year and a half ago, around the time we were developing the tracks that became this album, I found out that I have a rare, incurable, progressive, neurodegenerative retinal disease that is causing progressive visual loss and distortion. I’ve previously had other medical problems that had led to me having to give up my previous career, and I had thought I’d found a way of coping with those while still feeling able to keep creatively active.

Although I haven’t been consciously worrying about my eyes, (possibly being in emotional), this diagnosis coincided with me deteriorating mentally in other ways. I am aware that other people have worse problems, and am not wanting to make a fuss, but it knocked my sense of my identity and future. Whether deliberately or not, this has fed into the music on this album. 

‘My Blistering Mind’ is sung from the perspective of someone struggling with mental health issues. [Where I mention ‘splintering mind’ inn the song, I think I mean a mind that has jagged edges that cause pain, I'm not referring to schizophrenia or multiple-personality disorders].

‘The Mandatory Prize’ is sung from the perspective of an authority figure informing someone that they are obliged to play a role that they haven’t chosen, and that they are supposed to at least pretend that they are grateful for. In an exaggerated way, via the influence of a Philip K Dick short story ("The Exit Door Leads In”), it is about social masking.

‘Never Really Felt Like Home’ is a melancholic instrumental, featuring Kathryn Thomas on flute, bass flute, and piccolo.

‘Smile, Smile, Smile’ was inspired by Philip K Dick’s novel ‘Flow My Tears The Policeman Said’, published in 1974. In the novel, the protagonist (Jason Taverner) wakes up in a world where he is no longer one of the most famous people on the planet. He goes from being a highly privileged person in a police-state, to an undocumented person, and therefore at constant risk of being sent to a forced labour camp. This song also relates to the theme of someone losing what they thought was their identity.

Intermission is an instrumental.

‘Parallel Lives’ is about the way we tend to drift apart, whether on an individual or societal level, without either side having deliberately decided to do that. Kathryn Thomas joins me on vocals for this track.

‘Eversion’, inspired by the Alastair Reynolds novel, also explores issues of identity. A surgeon finds himself repeatedly living through similar experiences in different historical periods.

Pretty Blue Fox is an instrumental named after a game-playing group in Philip K Dick’s 1963 novel ‘The Game Players Of Titan’.

‘Just Another Thing’ is the one song on the album that was specifically inspired by my recent diagnosis, and is about outwardly being someone who just copes with whatever life flings at them, but  not feeling how you seem. 

‘Dropping The Mask’ is an instrumental. 

After a fair bit of earlier angst, the album ends with a song intended to be more hopeful, ‘Just Hold On (Pts 1 and 2)’. Originally the first section of the song was written as a classical piece for choir, but it gradually evolved into the introduction to ‘Just Hold On’. As the choir fades away, there is a guitar solo, and later the vocals and rest of the instruments join in. The song is intended to portray someone trying to support someone else, or perhaps themselves, who is struggling with depression. Many people don’t find life easy, many struggles are invisible, and sometimes just managing to hold on is an achievement worth celebrating.    

Malcolm, May 2026

Parallel Lives album

Copyright Hats Off Gentlemen It’s Adequate / Glass Castle Recordings / Malcolm Galloway / Mark Gatland / Kathryn Thomas 2026

Recorded in Camden and South Woodford (London), Norfolk and The Wirral, UK.

Lyrics

My Blistering Mind

Jitter, jitter, can’t sit still
Can’t hold one thought at a time
Can’t start, can’t stop, one chain, unlocked, uncorked
And it won’t stop,
And it won’t stop,
And it won’t stop

Fragment edges
Try to hold on
At the sharp end
Break at the hair-pin bend
Too many thoughts try to fit into my head

Stop

And I’m breaking down

Up and down
I’m lost
I’m undefined
I’m climbing walls
Inside my mind
I’m running out
I’m shutting down
It’s seeping out
I’m sinking

Inside
Inside my splintering mind
Inside
Inside my blistering mind
inside
Inside my splintering mind
Inside, inside my blistering mind 

Welcome inside
Inside my blistering mind
Inside 
Inside my splintering mind
Inside
Inside my blistering mind
Step inside
Inside my blistering mind

Take the fear and feel it hold
Turn it around turn it inside out
Make it something you can use

Inside, inside my splintering mind
Step inside, inside my blistering mind
Inside, inside my blistering mind 
Step inside, inside my splintering mind

Step inside, inside my blistering mind
Step inside, inside my blistering mind
Welcome inside, inside my splintering mind
Inside, inside my blistering mind.

The mandatory prize

This must come as a wonderful surprise
You’ve won the mandatory prize
So if you’d come with me now
We’ll take you into protective custody
And if you say you didn’t choose to play
Well that’s a shame
But the rules are clear
By not opting out you’re in, you’re obliged
To take part
Congratulations
You’ve won

Congratulations are in order so I’ve heard
You must be the luckiest man in the world
For our mutual convenience, I think you’ll find
The contract has been presigned

This must come as a wonderful surprise
You’ve won the mandatory prize
So if you’d come with me now
We’ll take you into protective custody
And if you say you didn’t choose to play
Well that’s a shame
But the rules are clear
By not opting out you’re in, you’re obliged
To take part
Congratulations
You’ve won 

The small print was there
Though the letters were small
They were written by the finest minds money can buy
So try if you like
It won’t bother us at all
It’s all in the contract

To save you time we’ve written your acceptance speech
And ensured that the photographs show that you smiled
You moving words will be very well received
A good outcome for all
I’m sure you’ll agree

This must come as a wonderful surprise
You’ve won the mandatory prize
So if you’d come with me now
We’ll take you into protective custody
And if you say you didn’t choose to play
Well that’s a shame
But the rules are clear
By not opting out you’re in, you’re obliged
To take part
Congratulations
You’ve won

Lose when you win
Fail to begin
End as you intend to start

Smile, Smile, smile

A wave from a tech and he points to his watch
Still, half a minute to fill
He turns to the lens with a wink and smiles
Improvises
Then ends the show with a trademark tug on his fly
Not a beat missed
But he knows
That’s not happened for years

“You know your voice is gone”
She says “you know you’re coasting
Grey hair sneaking out
Dying time
You’re growing old
You’re getting tired 
You’re just a little less than you were 
Once upon a time
Worn out by all the smile smile smile”

By the smile smile smile

“Just get in the ship” he says
“Just a minute I’ve got to
You know how it is”
But he knows she knows
And she’s stopped pretending

He thinks he’s paid back everything he owed his former protege 
Be she’s still insisting that he still needs to hear her

A Callisto cuddle sponge to the face
The spikes invade
Bury in, burying 
Deeper, inject, secrete
Eyes open and close
Nothing left but pain and sleep

Nobody knows you 
Nobody knows who you are 
Nobody knows
Nobody, nobody knows you

Nobody knows you 
Nobody knows who you are 
Nobody knows
Nobody knows 
Nobody knows you 
Nobody knows who you are 
Nobody knows
Nobody, nobody knows you

Jxxx Txxx  does not exist

Open eyes and hospital gone
Out of the gown and back in a suit
Taken back to my youth
To the kind of cheap hotel
I used to frequent
When I was unknown

Panic
But I never panic
Stop. Take stock
Open wallet
No ID
Call the front desk
He’s never heard of me 
I need something to show
Before the first roadblock

Nobody knows you 
Nobody knows who you are 
Nobody knows
Nobody, nobody knows you
Nobody knows 
Nobody knows who you are 
Nobody knows
Nobody, nobody knows you 
Nobody knows you 
Nobody knows who you are 
Nobody knows
Nobody, nobody knows you
Nobody knows 
Nobody knows who you are
You’ve never existed

“I wish I’d heard of you so I could be impressed” she said
Before she handed him over
“Flow my tears” the policeman said
“You supermen are so easy to manipulate”

You can’t be found
You’ve pulled the files
Everyone has a file
You don’t exist 

parallel lives

On both sides of the window
Quiet night
We don’t see each other
We don’t recognise where we went wrong

We don’t intersect
We don’t notice
We don’t stop

We live our lives in parallel lines
We’re living parallel lives
If we could break our parallel lines
If we could meet again

On both sides
Of different worlds
Parallel conversations
Never meeting
Never really speaking
We remain disconnected
We can’t explain where we went wrong

We don’t, we don’t intersect
We don’t notice
We don’t, we don’t stop

We live our lives in parallel lines
We’re living parallel lives
If we could break our parallel lines
If we could meet again

eversion

Wake up
Wake up

The impersonal malice of the unchained sky
The lightening scratches inside my eye 
An affordable surgeon
I shouldn’t be here
It’s all too familiar, I’m living the dream

Waking up from nightmares at my writing desk
I stumble down corridors masked and dead

Wake up 
Wake up

“Oh come on, not again, you were so close
And back he goes”

Canvas, rope and trephination
Sea and salt and wind and sail
Readings at the captain’s table
Distraction in a tale
Cannonballs and terminal glow
The quill, the inkwell, out of place
Fragments out of time colliding
On this lucky ship

For more than a hundred days
I’ve been trying to get through to you
We’ve been through this so many times now
I’d thought you’d have noticed

Dreams of airships reach my story
Piston-driven age of steam
Piercing fragments half forgotten
Breaking through an unmined seam

Past the bones of ancient monsters
Leave a pinprick in the sky
I think I remember dying
Somewhere else, another time

This is the bit where you always lose it
Don’t crash on me again
We don’t have time to wait while you disappear to who knows when
A simpler time that never existed, the comfort of a fictional space
But even in your chosen dreams you just can’t win, you keep on dying

The worlds of my scientific romance
Intrude in my day-to-day
And I must confess, that I get tired, I get tired of dying

Walking around, with someone else’s bones inside me
With a past, borrowed from an onboard library
Trying not to slip back
Trying to hold on
Hold onto now, hold onto now
I don’t if I can
Please, please, help me

You, a part of me
Created for empathy
But sometimes things go wrong
I’m sorry reality reality hurts
But you’re code
Welcome home

We’ve one last just job to do
So let’s see it through
And save who we can of the crew

Whatever you’re made of
It’s the choices you make that make you
That define you, and when you’re done you can rest

just another thing

I made the mistake of thinking for a while
That things had stabilised
That I knew what I was doing 
That I knew where I was going
Knew where things were flowing
Well I shouldn’t be surprised
It turns out I was wrong

I don’t like to complain
But it feels like yet again
There’s one more problem
For my problem basket to contain 
And it’s getting pretty full
And I’m worried that I might soon
Find that something’s dropped 

So I’m bouncing between 
Hope and lethargy
With an energy
Borrowed from tomorrow
But tomorrow wants it back
Overspent promises, nothing in the tank
I’m getting overdrawn from my physical bank 

So I’m struggling from problem into
Crisis into stasis
It’s looking like a habit
I don’t know to face this
So I put on my public face
And say the kind of things that I tend to hear myself say

It’s just another thing
So add it to the list
Throw it on the pile
It’s just another thing
It’s just another thing
So add it to the list

It’s just another thing
It’s just another thing
So add it to the list
Throw it on the pile
It’s just another thing
It’s just another thing
So add it to the list 
It’s just another thing

I get one problem stabilised
And then I think I’m due a break
Well life’s not fair
It doesn’t have to work that way
It hasn’t worked that way before
Why does it come as a surprise
Every time I catch up
I’m lost again before the paint dries

I must admit 
I’ve been more than a bit
Discombobulated recently
I can’t deny the
Increasing  frequency
Of noticing 
How close I’ve come to 
Letting the mask slip

I’m not as calm as I seem
I’m not as brave as I pretend
I’m not everyone I need to be much of the time 
I know I say I’ll cope
I’ve always been someone who copes
Until one day I won’t
Until then…

It’s just another thing
So add it to the list
Throw it on the pile
It’s just another thing
It’s just another thing
So add it to the list

It’s just another thing
It’s just another thing
So add it to the list
Throw it on the pile
It’s just another thing
It’s just another thing
So add it to the list 
It’s just another thing

JUST HOLD ON

When you feel like there’s nothing left to give
When you think that you’re broken
When each extra step is one step too far
Just hold on, just hold on

When morning comes and you just can’t face the day
When everything at best feels grey
Or worse when you feel nothing
When all you seem to do is tear yourself apart
Just hold on, just hold on

It’s not too late
It’s not too late
It’s not too late
To keep on
To hold on

You’re not alone
You’re not alone
So keep on holding on

You’re not alone
You’re not alone
So keep on, holding on

Take my hand
And we’ll hold on
Just keep holding on
Just keep holding on
Just keep holding on

It’s not too late
It’s not too late
To hold on
To hold on