DUBLIN noise rockers Girl Band will play Limerick this Friday. “Eagerly anticipated” is a phrase that features in the blurb with almost every album that arrives at Limerick Post entertainments desk but for Girl Band’s debut album, the weight of expectation is as uncompromising and suffocating as the record itself.
Signed to Rough Trade Records, ‘Holding Hands with Jamie’ is the debut album from the quartet building on the critical momentum generated by impressive releases ‘In My Head’ (2012), ‘France 89’ EP (2013) and ‘Lawman’ (2014) and tours in the UK, US, France and Iceland.
‘Holding Hands with Jamie’ is 40 minutes of exhilarating momentum and energy. The band is in a genre of their own making, producing a sound that is repulsive and compulsive in equal parts.
No hooks, key changes or pretty choruses from this girl band. Taking some tips from Mark E Smith’s ‘The Fall’, perhaps Black Flag and early Husker Du and a love of techno, the Girl Band sound builds on a groove from drummer Adam Falkner, bass player Daniel Fox – under stabs of guitar feedback and noise from Alan Duggan, re-imagining the depth of sonic aggression that can be got from the electric guitar. Dara Kiely is in charge on vox, leading this Girl Band through the unnerving, menacing disorder.
The album is a reflection of where the band is at this time; seven of the tracks were recorded, as live, in less than two days in Bow Lane, Dublin in April 2015. Lyrically the record deals with vocalist Dara Kiely’s mental health issues and his recovery from a breakdown in 2013.
The band’s guitarist Alan Duggan explained that the recording sessions gave the album its urgency and forward momentum.
“It was way more challenging to stay focused. It required a different mindset, tricky to find a balance between keeping a distance from the songs for perspective but also to fully concentrate on them.”
Cinematographer Bob Gallagher has added more layers of the gruesome and twisted to Girl Band’s music in three fantastic videos made for the band. The Dublin based director made the bizarre and genuinely disturbing video for Girl Band’s eight-minute cover version of Blawan’s ‘Why They Hide Their Bodies Under My Garage?’ which has now more than 100,00 views.
Bob Gallagher made videos for ‘Paul’ and ‘Pears for Lunch’ from the debut album, both dealing with the masks that people wear to be accepted: be it the unravelling of an actor in a pig costume on a kid’s TV show or a “human TV set” that wants to only show images of a perfect life on his screen.
Girl Band’s debut album is a compulsive racket, the guitar sound is fresh and inventive and all the better for their sheer bloody-mindedness not to conform.
The opportunity to experience this band live is eagerly anticipated. Girl Band play Dolan’s this Friday September 4.
