On 30 May 2025, I saw Gareth open for Kip Moore in Birmingham. In the review published on this very website the following morning, I wrote that “Gareth is going places”.
Given that his debut album is called Halfway Home, that almost looks like a pun now. It wasn’t intended as one. It was a statement of fact, and nothing here suggests I need to revise it.
“One That Got Away” starts things off with country pop perfection. It’s the universality of it that gets you. These are feelings anyone can recognise, delivered by someone with the voice to make them count.
“Keep Myself From Dreaming” isn’t breaking new ground, but that doesn’t matter. Country music doesn’t have to break new ground. It just has to be good, and Gareth understands that perfectly well.
With “1,000 Lifetimes”, meanwhile, he’s surely got the wedding first dance market cornered. There’s a romance running through this record, and “Changing My Mind” captures it beautifully. Smooth, assured, and all about the changes that “she” brought, it’s the sound of a life being turned around by someone else.
“Everything I Love” is the flip side of that. This is what happens when she leaves. The same matters of the heart, viewed from the other end of the relationship, and Gareth sounds just as comfortable dealing with the hurt as he does the happiness.
You know his story by now: the move from Northern Ireland to Nashville to follow his dreams. Listening to “Rhonda’s Call” and “Mother’s Eyes”, though, brings home what that must have cost him. There’s an emotional weight here that goes beyond romance. Being away from home is one thing; hearing the people you’ve left behind is quite another. You can feel the distance in these moments.
Then “High On Love” brings us back to the romance, and by “Nights I Can’t Get Back”, you can imagine this thing going gold. The voice, the songs, the appeal: everything seems to be in place.
His Irish heritage gets a little more room on “If You Want Me Too”, with a Celtic tinge mixed into the country sound, before “Try” deals in simple love and the current single, “Happy For You”, closes things with simple heartbreak. Simple in the telling, perhaps. Rather less so when you’re living it.
That’s really what Halfway Home is about. Matters of the heart, sung by a man with a great voice who has followed his dreams and made a record that matches them.
Country music is enjoying a boom. Anyone who saw Luke Combs play to nearly 300,000 people across three nights at Wembley, or has tried getting tickets for Country To Country, can tell you that. Gareth has arrived with songs that fit the moment, and enough feeling to make you believe in them.
Halfway Home is the sound of someone doing what he loves and doing it very well. Gareth is going places. There’s no reason to think this journey ends here.
Rating: 7.5/10
