Malcolm Galloway is vocalist, multi-instrumentalist and producer of London-based progressive rock band Hats Off Gentlemen It’s Adequate. He’s joined on bass by Mark Gatland, who also sings backing vocals, plays keyboards, and is co-producer.
The band’s ninth album, Parallel Lives, is due to be released in early September 2026. Nick Holmes Music spoke to Malcolm Galloway (MG) in London in mid-July 2026.
Nick Holmes Music: The last time we met, you were telling me about your developing eye condition; you now talk about it quite openly?
MG: Yes. It’s a rare, neurodegenerative, progressive, incurable retinal disease where the cells that respond to light in the back of the eye, particularly around the central part of the vision – which unfortunately is the bit we use for reading and faces – are dying off. At the moment, it affects one of my eyes much more than the other, and it causes a visual distortion.
If I’m trying to read, numbers might get duplicated or swapped around so I can end up misreading very easily. Things like trying to do the artwork for this album are noticeably more difficult than they were for the last album. I can’t tell so easily whether something’s in line or not. Imagine if you looked at a chessboard; the lines are wiggly, not straight.
And it also makes people’s faces look distorted. One side of their face looks like one of the hilariously distorted things in a fairground mirror. So I’m not saying it’s as bad as that at the moment, but in terms of the faces, they are quite distorted. So that’s disappointing.
Nick Holmes Music: Is your eye condition the reason why there’s less guitar on Parallel Lives than on previous albums?
MG: I’m still learning how to manage it because it’s progressive. When I catch up with learning how to deal with it, it’s moved on, and so I’ve got to adapt again. One of the differences with the new album is that it was made with a keyboard, with a laptop, with a huge screen to make it easier to see.
In terms of the guitar, the fretboard does look distorted, though I don’t think that’s currently so much of an issue because, on the guitar, you play by feel rather than just by sight. I’m not sure we had any deliberate plan to use a guitar or synth; songs seem to go the way they want to go. And I don’t mean that in any supernatural way. Subconsciously, it doesn’t necessarily feel like you’re choosing how they go, although presumably there is some part of you inside that’s deciding these things. But songs feel like they develop how they develop.
Someone mentioned they wanted more guitar solos. They are lots of fun for me, and I’m certainly not against them. But I would want a solo to feel like it’s serving the song rather than serving my desire to do a twiddly bit. I mean, the next album may have more of a guitar-y sound. It just seems to be what happens and what follows the theme of the song, rather than anything very consciously mediated. Having said that though, the keyboard’s less hassle to tune!
Nick Holmes Music: The new album feels more personal, particularly a song like Just Another Thing?
MG: I think that it’s entirely true that there’s more stuff that’s directly personal than I would normally do. And to be frank, probably more than I’m hugely comfortable with in some ways. When I’m performing on stage, it feels quite open and cathartic. But it’s often nice to do these things from behind a character in a story, rather than necessarily as me.
Just Another Thing is very directly based on a personal experience. That was when my wife and I were coming back from Moorfields [Eye Hospital] after getting my diagnosis. Although my stage performances might be quite emotional, the rest of the time I’m pretty emotionally restrained, and it tends to be more kind of dark humour.
I find that if people are being really sympathetic and looking very concerned about me. I don’t necessarily feel very comfortable with that. But I also don’t want to be ungrateful if people are concerned. There may be a contradiction between not being somebody who, in everyday life, particularly wants people going, oh, poor you. On the other hand, I’m writing songs about it, which maybe could be seen as inviting that kind of thing.
Nick Holmes Music: I think it can make it more universal because although other people’s experiences are different from yours, everyone has their problems.
MG: Yes, I think that’s a good point. And one thing I do like at concerts is people coming up and saying a certain song really resonated with them because they felt understood. And although it may be a different particular problem, that sense of you’re not alone, that people are facing things together, is important. I’m not trying to say, “please give me lots of sympathy,” but I am interested in people feeling understood.
Nick Holmes Music: There’s quite an influence from Philip K. Dick on the album. I’m interested to see how you turn inspiration from literature into something which follows your theme?
MG: The second song on the album, Mandatory Prize, was loosely inspired by a short story by Philip K. Dick [The Exit Door Leads In, published in 1979]. I think that was written during the Vietnam War. It’s about somebody who is forcibly entered into a lottery, and the mandatory prize is a college scholarship. The college is a military college and comes with conscription into the military.
The aspect that I was particularly interested in is the idea that the person involved has a kind of social role and they’re expected to be grateful. They didn’t choose what was thrust on them. And that seemed to resonate with me, with this sense of masking, neurodiversity, and mental health issues. I empathised with the character who feels stuck in that position that is seen as a success. It’s like, how did I get here? Is this really what I would have chosen? Is this really what I want?
They’re expected to smile and go to the press conference where their positive comments about this prize have already been written.
Smile, Smile, Smile was inspired by [Philip K. Dick’s 1974 novel] Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said. You’re probably aware of the reference to Dowland [the song Flow My Tears by the late 16th/early 17th century English composer John Dowland]. Philip K Dick has inspired lots of rock bands to write music. But he himself was a huge classical music enthusiast, and his novels are filled with references to classical music. In Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, there’s a world-famous celebrity, a very successful person in a police state. But he’s not a very sympathetic character. He doesn’t seem that bothered by the other people who don’t have such a pleasant time in this world, which is very restricted and dangerous for people who don’t have his kind of privilege.
After being attacked by what the book calls a Callisto cuddle sponge [an alien creature], he wakes up in a world that’s changed. He’s never existed. He’s not famous anymore. At the next roadblock, he hasn’t got any ID. He’s at risk of being taken to a forced labour camp.
So that’s a song about your changing sense of identity. So if your circumstances change and you are no longer what you were expected to be, what is your sense of self? I think that’s resonated with me in various things in my life where circumstances have changed my sense of identity. For example, where I had to give up my medical career because of previous medical problems. And how much are we dependent on other people’s perceptions of us and their expectations of us, as opposed to an inherently strong sense of our own identity?
Nick Holmes Music: And related to that is the theme of social masking?
MG: Yes. The eye diagnosis really knocked me mentally. Not in the sense that I was consciously thinking, oh, I’m really worried about not being able to see. It was more just getting more anxious, more depressed. I’m a lot better than I was six months or so ago, but I was properly depressed.
It wasn’t that I was consciously worrying about my eyes. I think I was in some ways a bit in denial, really. But just that sense of self being knocked and then becoming more vulnerable to negative patterns of thinking.
It’s not that I’d set out to write a song about being depressed, but it’s very difficult if you’re writing songs not to have what you’re going through being reflected in what you’re writing. I suppose there are plenty of people who are very good commercial songwriters, and they can separate their own feelings from what the brief is and can produce whatever they’re asked to produce. And that’s an impressive skill, but not necessarily one that I personally have.
When I’m writing, it just seems to happen in a not hugely consciously mediated way. So throughout the album there’s the theme of what is your sense of self when your identity is challenged, and managing mental health issues. So some songs are written from a more personal perspective, and some are inspired by the Philip K. Dick stories, which in some ways gives the comfort of an emotional distance from being too obviously identified as the protagonist, but they reflect the themes of what I was struggling with.
Nick Holmes Music: Talking about literature, the song Eversion is inspired by the novel of the same name by the science fiction writer Alistair Reynolds. In some ways, I think it’s the strongest song on the album.
MG: Thank you. It’s definitely the proggiest!
Nick Holmes Music: Tell me about the character, and from whose point of view the song is sung.
MG: The narrative viewpoint shifts around. It’s deliberately uncertain sometimes where the different phrases are coming from. I think Alastair Reynolds is a great science fiction writer, and he’s also a huge prog rock fan, and he’s been very encouraging with our music.
I was really grateful when he was very supportive with our Nostalgia for Infinity album [released in 2020], which featured several songs inspired by his writing. I did ask him what I can say about Eversion because I don’t want to give too many spoilers. So I’m being slightly cautious about how I’m phrasing it.
In the book, there’s a character who is a surgeon on a ship, and a similar sequence of events happens in a series of different timelines, gradually getting more futuristic as the story goes on. I really like how that book’s written. It starts off like a ripping pirate’s yarn – it’s nautical, and the language changes with each iteration of this character’s experiences. In each section, he seems to die and then wakes up in a later time period.
Each time, the style of writing changes. I think it’s really nicely done. And gradually, the character is starting to feel that their reality is less convincing. The character is noticing, as the novel goes on, more and more inconsistencies in his world and noticing anachronisms. I think Alistair himself has said that it’s probably his book that is most influenced by Philip K. Dick.
The song starts from the perspective of this surgeon and ends from the perspective of a ship’s computer trying to persuade him that his value doesn’t depend on what he is, what his background is, but rather on the choices he makes. So that’s why we put in the lyric, it’s the choices you make that define you.
'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' Eversion
Hopefully, that doesn’t give away too much of the story, but gives a bit of an idea of this character who had their sense of self-worth defined by their social role; for him, this role of being a doctor. As that is challenged, he’s having to learn that his value doesn’t have to depend on his social identity but can be defined by his actions.
I suspect that, as a former doctor, there’s an element that may have appealed to me in a semi-autobiographical way, although I’ve never been a doctor on a spaceship. I’ve never personally done a trephination.
I was also quite pleased to manage in one of the songs to squeeze in the word ‘discombobulated’ that you don’t often get in song lyrics. It’s quite difficult to make it scan.
'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'
Just Another Thing
Nick Holmes Music: You have illustrated the themes very well, but tell me how the title track Parallel Lives ties in with those themes.
MG: The song itself originated with a feeling from late at night, looking out of a window and seeing people walking in the streets and lights in different buildings and blocks of flats. Everybody’s in their own mind; their problems and issues are a very big chunk of their world, understandably. The idea that you’ve got all these different worlds going on in parallel, hardly connecting with each other.
I thought that metaphor was relevant on a social level. I am concerned about where we get into silos, where we don’t communicate with people, when you disagree with somebody, whether it’s politics or whatever is the dividing line. And then we live in parallel where each group is told that we’re right, but we don’t communicate with anyone else.
And then on more interpersonal things, how easy it is to drift apart into these parallel lives. You start off being connected, and eventually it’s as if you have these parallel lives. I realise mathematically that’s not entirely true. You don’t become parallel (unless you are in a non-Euclidean geometry).
You start with a connection, and then you end up with a separation that feels unbridgeable, and neither side has necessarily chosen to be there, and you can’t work out how to break that divide.
And also within ourselves, we have different masks and identities and different aspects of ourselves. And sometimes these can feel quite separate, disconnected, and parallel. So that was how I felt that title and song covered several other themes that were in other songs in the album.
Nick Holmes Music: You end on a positive note with Just Hold On. It’s a gorgeous song. At the start of the song, there’s a long instrumental section before you sing, which I think is beautiful, and there’s a very Dave Gilmour-type solo.
MG: Thank you. Generally with our albums, we try not to end on too much of a downer. I would generally say I’m in life sceptical rather than cynical. So assuming that everything might be awful rather than that everything is absolutely, definitely awful.
I think it is worth trying to engage with and embrace the positive things in life no matter what else is going on. Just Hold On is sung from the perspective of somebody who’s either trying to convince someone else, or perhaps themselves, that it’s never too late to try and grab on to some of the positive things that life can offer.
Because sometimes when people are not in a good place, it can feel like that is a very distant prospect. It’s saying, even if that’s how you feel at that moment, just hold on; it’s still worth trying.
Nick Holmes Music: Is it partly you talking to yourself?
MG: At least partly, yes. I mean, there’s an element of talking to myself, but also, with people who have related issues.
Nick Holmes Music: What about playing the album live? Are there any fans for an album launch?
MG: We’ve got various gigs coming up. We’re supporting Alan Reed in his last London show, and we’re playing Punks For Charity, and we’ve got Prog the Forest. We don’t currently have any plans to play the whole album through, but we will be playing songs from the new album at our gigs, and I’ve also started including some in my solo sets.
Yesterday [17 July] I did Just Another Thing, the first time trying that live as just an acoustic guitar and voice song. I did get frustrated; with ordinary lighting, I could see my guitar tuner well enough. Then when I was on stage, I couldn’t see the detail on my tuner properly. That was actually quite frustrating. I’ll have to invest in a guitar tuner with a different kind of display. That was frustrating.
But Mark [Gatland] is very supportive, and he says, even if he has to guide me onto the stage and guide me off, he’ll keep me playing for as long as I can. I’m certainly intending to keep playing because it’s so important for me in terms of the cathartic element.
Yesterday I had things that I struggled with. The gig itself was Prog for Peart, and I’m a big fan of that festival; it’s a lovely audience. And then shortly afterwards – it’s pretty random for me which joints play up at what point – something just shifted, I think in the cartilage of my knee, and just suddenly my knee gave way, and I was really struggling to stand or walk. And that was inconvenient for the journey back on public transport. But fortunately it happened after the gig.
Nick Holmes Music: So is it important then that you keep on with the music partly because of your sense of self?
MG: I think it is very important for my sense of self. I mean, if some people enjoy listening to it, that’s also a nice bonus. But I have to say, the therapeutic aspect is very important to me. Sometimes people say, how can you keep playing with whatever issues? And I’m aware there are plenty of people who are playing with worse challenges. But for me, it’s not a question of how you play despite the challenges; it’s how you would cope with the challenges if you couldn’t perform. I would really struggle.
Nick Holmes Music: Tell me about the pleasure music brings you as well.
MG: Music is one of the biggest joys in life. I am a karaoke obsessive. So if I don’t perform in some way regularly, I really struggle. The performing is where I feel most like me.
And it feels like, in many ways, the time off stage is the time when I’m having to pretend. You know, when we talk about masking and things and mental health. When I’m performing, that’s when I feel I can just be me. And the rest of the time I find being much harder than doing. I’m quite good at doing stuff, but just being I find quite hard work.
But being on stage and performing, I suppose, is when I really come to life.
This interview has been edited slightly for length and clarity
Parallel Lives is due to be released on 4 September 2026
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Previous interviews with Malcolm Galloway
