To say the ironically named, Dublin 4-piece, Girl Band won’t be to everyone’s taste is perhaps the understatement to end all understatements. They are a bunch of discordant, anarchic, noise merchants not to put too fine a point on it. They make no attempt at all to be melodic or to give the song any real structure barring Adam Faulkner’s jarring drum beat and Daniel Fox’s insistent distorted bass. Dara Kiely’s vocals are so far away from my taste they are in a different galaxy, somewhere between Frank Black (Pixies) and Kurt Cobain. Given that, for most of us in music almost unconsciously err towards the melodic and formulaic, it takes some doing to escape those confines.
There will be an audience out there for whom the above elements will make Girl Band absolutely essential listening and I am sure their gigs are a riot (maybe literally). Would I say I am a fan of the band or the song? No. I am sorry, I am just too boring I guess to want to listen to this more than the handful of times I am duty-bound to. BUT, the world of music absolutely needs bands like Girl Band to push those boundaries, to stop music getting too sanitised and homogenised, in the way that Dinosaur Jr, Sonic Youth, Jesus & Mary Chain did in their day.
If you like your music erm….un-musical… fill yer boots!
