Album Review: Elaiza’s “Gallery”

Hey hey, guys! It’s now been exactly two weeks since Conchita and Austria took the Eurovision trophy and yes, it really has seemed like an eternity and a half, hasn’t it? Well, as a way to beat Post Eurovision Depression (PED), both James and I (but mostly James) listen to the albums that were released by the contestants from the Contest that’s just gone by. Kicking this year’s reviews off is Germany and Elaiza, who released their album soon after their win in USFD. So what’s the album about and what do we think of it? You better scroll down and read it, so!

Elaiza’s album is the first one to be reviewed, but what do we think about it?

Elaiza was the underdog in the German national selection, coming out of nowhere to win the special wildcard to get into ‘Unser Song für Dänemark’ and then actually beating huge stars like Unheilig, The Baseballs, Oceana, MarieMarie and Santiano to win the German ticket to Copenhagen. Soon after they won USFD, they released their debut album ‘Gallery‘ on March 28th in Germany. The album contains twelve songs and each song has been described by Elaiza themselves as ‘a photo which has its own little story to it’. Sadly, it hasn’t been released internationally (yet!) but the full track list is on Youtube and if you would like to listen to the entire album there, you may click this nice little link. Now, here’s what we think of ‘Gallery’!

I must clarify something; going into this, I had expectations of violins and tubas and any other folky instruments to feature on nearly every single track, but I knew the accordion would feature heavily, as Yvonne plays it. However, I was surprised to find that those sort of the instruments weren’t coming up as prominently as I had first thought. For me, I feel like this album has a nice balance between pop and folk and it shows Ela’s roots in a way where you know where she’s from but she’s also not rubbing it in your face, with the variety of upbeat tracks and ballads. And for the purposes of this article, I won’t be including ‘Is It Right’, as when the song was picked for Eurovision, we did a review of the song, which you can read here. Nevertheless, they’re bound to get some form of recognition for that song – watch this space!

The album opens with ‘Fight Against Myself’, which is indeed a personal favourite of mine. This is one of the more upbeat tracks on the album, and talks about having to deal with imperfections and changing ourselves in order to become almost socially acceptable – which is something I relate to, personally.  This was the B-side to the “Is It Right” single and one of the two songs that was hoping to go to Eurovision, but the German public obviously picked the other song for Denmark. If it was me, I would have loved it if this went to Copenhagen, but judging by how well “Is It Right” went down (which I also adore), it was probably the best. Still, who doesn’t love hitting mannequins, test tubes and a mirror with baseball bats with faces of utter rage?

Another song that I would single out as being a bit of a favourite of mine would be ‘Lemonade’ – the seventh song on the album. This song is another upbeat, but this is more of a happy song and that line ‘When life you gives you lemons, make lemonade’ is a very motivational line, so I think that the group are heading in a very self-hope direction lyrically. In terms of the music, the opening of the song does remind me of something you’d hear at Oktoberfest, but then it becomes mainstream-ish..James and I do like this one and for me, it’s a nice change from some of the other songs that are on the album, mostly ballads, such as ‘I Don’t Love You’ and ‘Invisible Line’.

Of course, I can’t do a review on each of the songs, but if I have to give you some other highlights on the album, here’s a just a few songs that we’d also love for you to have a listen to:

• ‘Green‘
• ‘Goodbye‘
• ‘Without‘ (Watch out for Ela’s pronunciation at the start of the song – you may think she’s saying “shitting in my bed”)
• ‘Cinderella‘

In general, I loved listening to this album and I think that there are some rather nice gems among the line-up! As well as that, I’m sure that even though this is their début album, we’ll be seeing a lot more great music coming from the group in the future. If I’m to rate the album out of ten – judging by the assortment of ballads and upbeat songs and the mixture of folk instruments and normal instruments in the songs – I would give ‘Gallery’ eight out of ten. But what do you think of the album?

Your views:

What’s your favourite song from Elaiza’s debut album?

Svana Lístí Agnarsdóttir from Iceland: I do like the song ‘Green’ – even though it sounds a little childlike, it’s happy and I like happy songs!

Frederic Ulriksson from Sweden: I like Invisible Line – I’m someone who likes ballads and it’s a nice one for me.

Ilias Kozantinos from Cyprus: For me, I adore ‘Is It Right’. Normally I don’t like songs with an accordion, but I just can’t help but love it..I also like ‘Green’.

So ‘Green’ seems to be a rather popular song amongst the fans, while ‘Is It Right’ only gets mentioned once..I’m sure though, if you listen to the album, you’ll have your favourites. If you have listened to ‘Gallery’, what did you think of it? Do you have any favourite tracks on the album? And what would you give the album out of ten? Feel free to tell us what you think by commenting below!