The year is 1988, your parents are driving down Route 66, the windows are down, and they’re blasting Bruce Springsteen to the setting of another sun. The song comes to an end, leaving them with a sense of calm, confidence, and acceptance of the pain that can be experienced in this life. Music changes a person, especially when they can relate to the tension painted in the melodies.
Last Year’s Model is a rock and roll band out of West Virginia that has mastered the art of heartland rock in the vein of Bruce, storytelling as a craft, and a hint of Pearl Jam, reminding you that the ’80s eventually led to the ’90s. Vocalist Brendan Gallagher is one of the original founders of the band and a driving force behind their steady rise over the past couple of years. As a lover of storytelling, Gallagher is an old-fashioned rock and roller, mysteriously displaced from the 1980s and left in the 21st Century as an honest, quality storyteller. The ability to simultaneously acknowledge pain and celebrate beauty through music is seemingly rare. Gallagher and Last Year’s Model have a gift for this art of deep, raw, and hopeful storytelling that needs more attention in the music industry.
We sat down with Gallagher to talk about the band’s history, their influences, the essence of their music, and why storytelling matters.
With the release of your first album, new fans (myself included) would likely be interested in the origin story of Last Year’s Model. How did things start for you guys?
Last Year’s Model started with me and our bass player 17 years ago. We met at church; we were part of a worship team. Not to sound egotistical, but we were pretty good, and people kept asking us to play out at sort-of-church functions, sort-of-not-church functions. As it grew from there, we just kept getting more and more attention. We never really took it seriously. It was always just like, “Yeah, if we get a gig, we’ll play a gig.” It wasn’t like we were actively pursuing shows or heading out on the road.
About six years ago, there was a venue near Clarksburg, WV where we got booked. It wasn’t a Christian venue; it was just a rock venue. The guy who was in charge heard us and was like, “Uh, where have you guys been hiding?” We didn’t realize that there was a major void in the music scene locally for bands who were doing rock that wasn’t metal, screamo, pop-punk — bands that were just doing rock that had some anthemic sounds and stadium rock. We got plugged into this void and we were like, “Maybe we should start taking this seriously.” We’ve been a band for 17 years, but we really started taking it seriously about 5–6 years ago.
After releasing numerous singles, you just released your first full-length album, The Neon Lights Collection. What inspired a record from the singles approach you were taking?
The single approach came about because of how people consume music now. I was hesitant just to put out 10 songs on an album. The Killers just put out their new album; it has 11 tracks on it, and I have found three tracks that I absolutely love. I keep going back to those tracks over and over again, and I keep telling myself, “I need to listen to the album as a whole because they wrote it that way.” There are 8 tracks that I keep skipping through to get to those three. Well, that’s how people consume music. Everybody gets an album, they can tell you 2-3 tracks on that album, but very few people can tell you all 10 tracks that are on an album. So, the way people consume music now with streaming and all, it made sense to just release a song, release a song, release a song, because that way you can get as many ears as possible on that track before you move on to the next one and let people digest that.
The Neon Lights Collection came to be because we got to a point where we had a bunch of those singles out. The logo for each single had something to do with neon lights, so they’re all brought together on this album. They’ve been remastered, and then they’ve had the other tracks added, as well.
What inspired the band name, “Last Year’s Model?”
We used to have a different name and were looking for a new one. Our old drummer needed to buy a snare drum and got a nice one at a much lower rate than it should have been. We went out to eat afterward and while we were sitting around the table, my drummer said to my bass player, “Tim, why did we get that snare drum so cheap?” And he said, “Because it was last year’s model.” We were like, “OK, band name. That’s it. We’re done.” There’s no lofty explanation to that band name.
I can tell from listening to your music that Pearl Jam had a big influence on you. What other artists impacted Last Year’s Model?
From a production standpoint, I would have to say One Republic were very influential in the sonic aspect. When it comes to writing music and approaches to that, The Cure, U2, The Killers. Bruce Springsteen is very, very influential on my approach to lyrics, ideas, and ways of looking at things. We have a sound that really blends ’80s new wave with ’90s alt-rock with a modern production aspect on that sound that gives it a unique feel. There’s the energy of Bruce in the vocal, but I don’t sound like Bruce. It’s so hard to define what it is that we do.
One person was like, “Oh man, you guys remind me of Sonic Youth.” I was like, “Have you ever listened to Sonic Youth? We sound nothing like Sonic Youth at all [laughs].” But I think that’s because there are elements of what we do that people grab ahold of and it reminds them of something else. I love heartland rock — Tom Petty, Bruce, John Cougar Mellencamp — that storyteller approach to music. I love that kind of thing. I think a great song is a song that transports you somewhere; you can listen to the song and even if you’ve never been there, you feel like you have been.
What role does spirituality and philosophy play into your music?
We all started in the Church with music. I wouldn’t say that any of our music is overtly spiritual, per se. Yet, when I approach lyrics, I do write from the standpoint of certain things people struggle with. I try to empathize with people, and I think that’s where the Spirit comes into play. My approach is that I don’t always have the experience that I’m singing about. For example, our song “Al” is about alcoholism. I personally have never struggled with alcoholism; I’ve never been drunk in my life.
I think that a relationship with God should put you in a place to be able to empathize, so that’s a lot of how I write — through empathy, understanding where people are, and the struggles they have with so many things we encounter in life.
Fitting to the heartland genre, your lyrics and music seem to ebb and flow from happy to sad. Why do you think that is for your music specifically?
That’s the hardest question anybody has ever asked me and I love it. So, I think a lot of it has to do with influences; that would be a part of it. Also, I think no story is perfect; there is no such thing as a perfect story. So, when you’re writing from a storyteller perspective, I think writing a song that is perfect, that has a perfect ending to it, is just disingenuous. There is happiness, but even in the happiness there is a tinge of sorrow. I think that influences a lot of that mindset with me. We are not black and white; we are not just one emotion.
Do you and the guys plan on touring anytime soon?
I would love to say yes. I’m not optimistic about the state of things with COVID-19. There’s not a lot of opportunity to break into new venues right now. I think we’re going to wait until spring to really hit it again, which I hate, because I’d love to tour on this music right now. We’ll see. If the opportunity comes up where I feel like we can pull it off and it’s safe, I’m open to that.
If you had to self-describe or “label” yourself as a band, what would that be?
Emotive heartland rock and roll that pushes boundaries that you wouldn’t expect to have within that genre. High energy. Passion. Raw. If you’re wanting good, just straight-forward rock and roll that you can bang your head to, but then drive with your windows down the next song on a summer night, we’ve got you covered [laughs]. Our music will remind you of something and nothing all at once.
You can follow Last Year’s Model on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
