Album of the Month: THE TALKIES by Girl Band

It delights me to no end that this is the second Irish band who get into my 'best album of the month' feature in 2019. All the more so because the abrasive brand of noise-rock played by Girl Band would not really be high on the list of 'my kind of music'. The Talkies, however, is so fucking good (cathartic, as people in the know would have you believe) that I'm willing to take its adventurous and raucous pleasures over albums like In the Morse Code of Brake Lights or Beneath the Eyrie.

The name of the band is better than it sounds: four lads from Dublin with not a girl between them. The Talkies is their second LP, and it is telling that it took them four years to release the follow-up to their 2015 debut Holding Hands With Jamie. Telling in the sense that the noise of The Talkies does not come out of nowhere. And nor do the vocals which sound like Mark E. Smith let completely, disconcertingly loose.

All through these punishing forty-six minutes, Girl Band create noise that is smart, diverse and perversely melodic. After the unsettling breathing of "Prolix", an introduction both fitting and bizarre, you get the intense pummeling of "Going Norway" that does not sound unlike The Fall at their least inviting. The melodies are there, however, and you might find it hard to get the brilliant and repetitive "Couch Combover" out of your head. Also, while the brief "Akineton" is little more than colourful noise, the six-minute "Laggard" extends intriguingly into the lo-fi fade-out. Better still is the epic "Prefab Castle" that builds and screeches and honks into this album's undisputed centrepiece. 

I love the aesthetics. I love the title and I love the cover that beautifully complement this wonderful experience which manages to turn sonic irreverence into sheer joy. The Talkies is a true artistic statement, subversive and utterly exciting. I would love to see how they evolve on the next album, and I do not care whether it will take them another four years to get there...