Hats Off Gentlemen It's Adequate and the Cost of Wearing a Mask on the Parallel Lives Album
A Ninth Album Written Lying Down, About Masks, Identity and a Hard Diagnosis
Malcolm Galloway writes music lying down. Long-standing health problems keep the Hats Off Gentlemen It’s Adequate songwriter horizontal for most of the day. So the band’s ninth album, Parallel Lives, began as ideas typed into a laptop in bed. It ended as an eleven-track record of progressive rock, synths, flute and contemporary classical writing.
Hats Off Gentlemen It’s Adequate’s title track Parallel Lives sits in the playlist below, and the band’s full run of coverage is gathered on the duo’s artist profile. The album came to this desk through PopHits.Co Music Charts, which verifies independent artists and places their releases across its network of music news titles. Give it a listen, then read on for how the duo built the record.
A Retinal Diagnosis, a Laptop in Bed and a Duo Producing Every Note of the Parallel Lives Album
The constraint arrived twice. Earlier health problems had already ended Galloway’s previous career, and the band had found a way to keep working around them. Then, about a year and a half before release, came a second diagnosis. While the tracks for this album were taking shape, Galloway learned of a rare, incurable, progressive retinal disease that is causing visual loss and distortion.
Galloway’s own album notes are plain about the effect. The diagnosis knocked the songwriter’s sense of identity and future, and that fed straight into the songs. Nothing on the record pretends otherwise.
Meanwhile, the working method stayed small. Galloway wrote the lyrics, played lead guitar and synths, produced, and also handled the mixing and mastering. Mark Gatland, who has played alongside Galloway since their school days, covered bass guitar, engineered the vocals, added guitars and synths, and co-produced. In addition, Kathryn Thomas joins on flute, bass flute, piccolo and vocals.
The rest of the package came from the same room. The band wrote and designed the booklet, took the photographs and made the artwork. As a result, there is no outside producer and no outside mastering engineer anywhere in the credits.
That economy still carries weight. The Progressive Aspect, which heard the album early, called it a beautiful, harrowing, dark and rewarding listen from beginning to end. Similarly, The Progressive Subway heard a synth-heavy, deceptively bright record carrying heavy subject matter.
Philip K Dick, Alastair Reynolds and Social Masking Shape What the Characters Sing
The album title points at disconnection: between people, and within one person moving between roles. Characters whose sense of self is under strain sing many of the songs. Some come from Galloway’s own life. Others come from science fiction.
My Blistering Mind opens the record from inside someone struggling with their mental health. By the end, the lyric turns towards facing those feelings and using them to make something. Galloway treats it as the frame for everything that follows.
Next, The Mandatory Prize takes a Philip K Dick short story as its route in. An authority figure tells someone they must play a role they never chose, and look grateful about it. Galloway describes it as an exaggerated song about social masking, which is also the thread running through the whole album.
Smile, Smile, Smile draws on Dick’s 1974 novel Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said. Its protagonist wakes in a police state where nobody knows who he is. He falls from celebrity to an undocumented person at risk of a forced labour camp. Fittingly, the song is dark and claustrophobic, with spoken verses and sung choruses.
Eversion then moves to the Alastair Reynolds novel of the same name. It follows a surgeon who keeps living through similar events in different historical periods. Finally, Just Another Thing is the one song written directly about the diagnosis. It describes looking like someone who copes with whatever arrives, while not feeling the way you appear.
Seven Songs, Four Instrumentals and a Choir Piece That Became the Closing Track
The structure does a lot of the work. Seven songs alternate with four instrumentals, and the instrumentals act as rooms between the arguments.
For example, Never Really Felt Like Home, written with Kathryn Thomas, is a melancholic piece led by her flute, bass flute and piccolo. Intermission swaps the tension for acoustic piano, a loose bass line and jazzy keys. Pretty Blue Fox takes its name from a game-playing group in Dick’s 1963 novel The Game Players of Titan. Later, Dropping The Mask follows the most personal song on the album and lets the music speak alone.
The title track sits at the centre. It is a spare, piano-led song about people drifting apart, individually or as a society, without either side ever deciding to. Thomas sings harmonies with Galloway on the chorus, which suits a song about two lives running side by side.
Then comes the turn. Just Hold On (Pts. 1 & 2) began life as a classical piece for choir. Over time, it became the introduction to a rock song. The choir fades into a guitar solo, and the vocals and the rest of the band arrive after it. After an album of masks and fractures, the closing message is that holding on is an achievement in itself.
For new listeners, the reference points are clear. The Progressive Subway recommends the record to fans of Genesis and Jethro Tull. Indeed, the bright synth sound sits close to Genesis in their 1980s pop years. Thomas’s flute, meanwhile, gives the instrumentals a lead woodwind voice, much as Ian Anderson’s flute did for Jethro Tull. The Progressive Aspect also heard Pet Shop Boys-style synths driving My Blistering Mind.
Where to Hear the Parallel Lives Album and Follow Hats Off Gentlemen It’s Adequate
Parallel Lives came out on 4 September 2026. Prog, Classic Rock and Mojo all picked earlier albums by the band as critics’ choices. This one suits listeners who like progressive and alternative rock with ideas behind it, especially anyone drawn to records built around a concept.
One detail is worth knowing first. Smile, Smile, Smile also appeared in June 2026 on the Smile, Smile, Smile single, backed by two instrumentals that are not on the album, The Amber Hour and Broken Arrow.
From the BestRock.News curator team: “The instrumentals carry as much of the argument as the lyrics. Kathryn Thomas’s flute on Never Really Felt Like Home says more about not fitting in than a verse could, and the choir that opens Just Hold On earns the hope the album ends on.”
Stream or buy Parallel Lives on Spotify, Apple Music and Bandcamp.
Follow Hats Off Gentlemen It’s Adequate across platforms: Spotify, Apple Music, Bandcamp, SoundCloud, YouTube channel, Instagram, Facebook, and X. Album notes, reviews and the full back catalogue are on the official website.
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