Doug Gillard: Parallel Stride – Album Review

Doug Gillard: Parallel Stride

(Dromedary Records)

DL available here

April 24 2026

A fabulously catchy album of songs from the old GBV and Nada Surf guitarist, Doug Gillard.

Ah, songs, what would we do without them? Songs – good ones, which stick around in your head – are what you get in spades with Doug Gillard. And Parallel Stride is packed with them. It seems, (well, it is) an age since he released his first solo record, the wonderful Salamander.

Opener, Face of Smiles, is a rockin’ stroll avant la lettre with a couple of beautifully wistful turns in the melody line and an upbeat guitar lick that plays off it and injects just the right amount of impetus to chivvy the track along. A warm strum of the rhythm guitar (which in itself has something of Teenage Fanclub about it) adds shade and tone. And then, is that a mellotron popping up for a late refrain? Whether it is or isn’t, Face of Smiles is a very moreish song: midtempo, assured, and adept at opening up the rest of the album. Of course, Gillard is no stranger to constructing knockout tunes. The two bands he is associated with, Nada Surf and Guided by Voices, set their store by making melodic, off-grid rock music.

This sense of calm assurance runs through the record. Saving My Life Every Day is a pleasing number which knows when to make its point: the drop when the song’s title is sung is such an obvious but winning trick that allows the instrumentation, which repeatedly ebbs and flows like the tide, to do its thing. Western or Larabee is another reassuring cut: the chunky guitar and the bank of soft multitracked voices that serve as a backing chorus are very nourishing. Cannons is an up tempo number that feels enmeshed in the warm strum of semi acoustic guitar tones and occasional “synthetic swells”, all of which may play against the song’s lyrical content. “These are the times that try our souls”, whispers Gillard, and yes they do, but it’s hard to get too worked up about them whilst listening to this.

Some of GBV’s restlessness can be heard in the busy title track, which also has a Who-like turn of phrase and a buzzing guitar solo. My Friends is another driving, itchy track that has something of GBV about it – though maybe a very early incarnation of the band. The metronomic tick of the beat plays well against the slightly obsessive lyrics and odd, sharp interjections of treated guitar.

Elsewhere Gillard’s softer side steers the ship: he is adept at making enjoyable alt-pop music, adding grit and intelligence to add a hinterland to a song that could otherwise be as plain as a pancake. New Vista has a gossamer quality to it which is informed by a chirpy guitar. The switch to a minor tone is as bittersweet as any Beach Boys number. And, Yes She Loves Me is a great example of making something out of virtually nothing: everything turns on the phrase that serves as the song title in this reflective laid back strum; a phrase which becomes an increasingly hypnotic point of return: the song – and listener – circle round it like a parched traveller chasing a mirage of an oasis in the desert. Until I See You Again is a fast-trotting, if gentle pop song with a descending melody line and some soft, chiming riffage that feels like it’s paying homage to Buddy Holly, or Help-era Fabs. The sliding psychedelics of the guitar leading the track out have something of Shack, too. But Gillard, like the practised conjurer he is, can make these sorts of props, however tried and tested, work to great effect.

And this is the point: whatever signals the listener gets (an ELO-esque “clomp” in Lost Alarmists, for instance) it’s a reference that never feels stale. Lost Alarmists – a song with some clerihew-like wordplay – ramps up the Black Country rockisms with the return, mid song, of what sounds like that mellotron we heard earlier. A guitar line then acts almost as a backing vocal (a trick Gillard is adept at on here) and we’re on the slow descent to the end of the song. It’s a number, odd, quietly psychedelic, that lives in a world of its own.

One of the best numbers is the last: She Showed Me The Earth is a wry, whimsical song that seemed to tell of a hobo love story. Gillard Waiting for His Girl? Maybe. The chug and drag of the guitar line and the seedy tap of the beat is charm itself, and the melodic riff, which starts to develop as the song comes to an end, is almost revelatory in feel.

We may be all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the kerb.

More about Doug Gillard can be found here.
Dromedary Record’s site is here.
All words by Richard Foster. More writing by Richard can be found at his author’s archive.