Issue Twenty-Two: Girl Band

While London continues to drip feed its regular apathy upon us, Dublin four-piece and Irish noise-rock trailblazers, Girl Band, are set to release probably the most dynamic, masterful and limitless record we’ve heard in recent years. Shortly after signing to Rough Trade in 2014, the band released their ‘Early Years’ EP leading with ‘Lawman’, an eerie, thumping track in which we hear their now indistinguishable sound in utero. Following a four year hiatus, which left fans and critics alike on tenterhooks, comes Girl Band’s 2nd studio album, ‘The Talkies’.

Just as much is expressed in Dara Kiely’s yowls, in his screams and heavy breathing as in the words themselves as this record knowingly deals with the phenomenon of sound, the artistic blast upon the senses as artistic communication becomes sensory rather than cognitive. Lyrically, Dara drops pronouns (he/she/us/them) and language is decontextualized, creating new forms of meaning and emotion. By erasing this integral part of learned language it becomes removed from its known axis, allowing it to rock seamlessly between the absurd and the everyday.

Recorded in November 2018 at Ballintubbert House, Ireland, who’s alien construction and corridors help to navigate Girl Band’s cataclysmic sound within a world of its own as this enigmatic manor becomes Girl Band’s sonic playground. And the sound of the record mirrors the distorted realism of Dara’s lyrics: to take life’s monotony and bring it into the realm of the absurd simply by exposing it; to look at the everyday, then to look at it again, and again, and again, until it becomes swollen and distorted to the point of surrealism. ‘The Talkies’ is continuously breathing, undergoing continual metamorphosis: the moaning and sawing guitars, the atonal blanket of sound, the abstractive lyrical repetition, chugging snare and ascending/descending snakes and ladders noise-rock guitars deliver something that is insatiable to the ears yet remains so distinctively Girl Band.

Did recording at Ballintubbert House have an effect on your sound?

Dan: Definitely. We built a studio in there, basically had the kitchen beside the control room. We recorded the drums on the landing and also down in this big stone basement which is how we got that hollow, echoing sound formed. So the physical space has been really useful for literally shaping the sound of the songs, especially with the instruments, rather than just trying to record them in a box. And recording guitars down there, you can literally place them elsewhere in the room and feel their distance or displacement in the recordings, this effect occurs organically, rather than by twisting a knob on a desk.

You’re trailblazers of Irish alternative music, Fontaines D.C., Just Mustard, and The Murder Capital all single you out as a key influence, have you felt the effects of that?

There have always been bands like that in Ireland, maybe not for a long time, but they have been here. I guess we just managed to get our music out of the country. Too many great bands don’t get to leave Ireland. One of the biggest influences for us was a band called Turning Down Sex. When we saw them live in the early days we were like- “woah! Songs can do that!?” So yeah, there’s always been those groups, but I guess the indie stuff similar to what was going on in the UK was getting most of the attention.

Your debut record, ‘Holding Hands With Jamie’, was pretty revolutionary, it represented a huge leap for guitar music, what were the expectations you put on this record?

Alan: With the first record, we just thought, “ok, all these songs put together makes sense and that makes a record” but with the second album we really went in to make a record. As for the expectation, I feel like the expectation is still on ourselves- it’s not easier, but it seemed a lot more logical to do it ourselves- we recorded with the same people as the last. The songs often refer to each other, the whole album itself is self-referential, so it made sense to keep it contained.

Your sound is anarchic, difficult to define, but the way tracks bleed into another gives the illusion of structure, how did you go about constructing ‘The Talkies’?

Dan: We weren’t really writing together as much anymore so we were more into demo-ing and writing down parts then cutting them up, putting them in the computer and kind of reconfiguring them that way. A lot of the time when we were arranging it and then we’d go to demo it live just wouldn’t work, so then we would just take one of the bass elements of it and then rebuild the tune again around that, - and normally you would have never actually arrived at that kind of thing on your own if you’d just shown up and got going.

And how do you feel about transferring this to the live shows?

Adam: Not playing live for 2 or so years gave us the headspace to make this album in such a way. We didn’t even really think about how we were going to do it live. Physically, I would have needed to move around the kit and stuff to match the recordings. Eventually, we did learn how to play it live, but whilst recording we didn’t think about that kind of consistency, if I thought, on record, the drums would sound better if I played them differently or moved the kit around, I would allow myself to do that.

Dara, you’ve set yourself creative limits lyrically in order to expand your surrealist environment, were you ever worried about it sounding prescribed?

Lyrically, I dropped all pronouns, I, you, he, she, they, them. I was aware that those situations were full on, (excessive)- ‘I’ was grandiose, ‘he/she’ would be sexist, ‘us/them’ would be racist, so from the lyrical side of the album, I thought if I capped those pronouns, it would give me this new world to focus in on. I just wanted to see if it could still be emotive. I’d never heard anything like that before, and suddenly I really began to notice it everywhere. I was listening to Bob Dylan, and I thought “he said ‘I’ there, that’s so tacky”. I mean, Bob Dylan is a genius, he’s one of the best lyricists ever, and I’m just like “sell out! Its been done, Bob!”.

Did the surrealist elements from the first album carry over?

Sort of, because I was restricted to the surroundings that I’d put on myself. I was just trying to hone in on this new world that would still be cohesive to the last one. What I did lyrically in the first album is something that I also wanted to do with the second, document a part of my life to some degree...so there’s a bit where: when you get examined by a doctor, they say to you “apple, penny, table” and you have a conversation and they ask you to repeat those three words again later. So the beginning of ‘Going Norway’ opens up with ‘apple, penny, table’ and ends with it. Those lyrical restrictions were to create a world, and it took me a long time, and I’m happy with the world they’re in now.

Words by Georgie Jesson, illustration by Joe Watson-Price