The Irish group Girl Band are about to release their second album, called The Talkies, this week. The record, out on Rough Trade on Friday, is as willfully abrasive and smartly corrosive as an indie act is likely allowed to be in 2019. And if I could compare this to anything, it might be to certain releases from Parquet Courts, but the truth is that Girl Band are taking far more risks than those cats ever took.
If "Shoulderblades" is rough, proto-industrial stuff, the sharper "Going Norway" is part hardcore, part Mark E. Smith on a bender. At their best here, like on the epic "Salmon of Knowledge", Girl Band venture into territory that's virtually hard to describe. In that sense, the band seem more intent on making an artistic point than in simply massaging the ears of of hipsters. And, to their credit, lots of this is so bracing as to be oddly invigorating, with "Couch Combover" riding past on a rhythmic hook that suggests the earliest of post-punk pioneers, while "Caveat" is the thing Malkmus heard in a bad dream, all shouty, clanging goodness. Girl Band are, like newer band Black Midi, determined to provoke a reaction in a listener, and for that they get a lot of credit from me. The stuff on The Talkies might not be the tunes you hum on the elevator on the way to work, but at least this material burns its way into your brain with the kind of force precious few indie acts these days possess.
The Talkies is out on Friday via Rough Trade.
More details on Girl Band via the group's official website, or their official Facebook page.
[Photo: Steve Gullick]