Most Normal
For their first album as Gilla Band, (formerly Girl Band) the foursome has redrawn their own paradigm. Most Normal is like little you’ve heard before, a kaleidoscopic spectrum of noise put in service of broken pop songs, FX-strafed Avant-punk rollercoaster rides and passages of futurist dancefloor nihilism. Covid lockdown robbed Gilla Band of any opportunity to try the new material out live, but the pandemic also incinerated any idea of a deadline for the new album. They were free to tinker at leisure, to rewrite and restructure and reinvent tracks they’d cut – to, as drummer Adam Faulkner puts it, “pull things apart and be like, ‘Let’s try this. We could try out every wild idea.” The group also fell under the spell of modern hip-hop, “where there’s really heavy-handed production and they’re messing with the track the whole time,” says Fox. “That felt like a fun route to go down, it was a definite influence.” Most Normal opens with an absolute industrial-noise banger that sounds like a manic house-party throbbing through the walls of the next room as a downed jetliner brings death from above. What follows is unpredictable, leading the listener through a sonic house of mirrors, where the unexpected awaits around every corner. The common thread holding Most Normal’s ambitious Avant-pop shapes together is frontman Dara Kiely. Throughout, he’s an antic, antagonistic presence, barking wild, hilarious, unsettling spiels, babbling about smearing fish with lubricant or dressing up in bin-liners or having to wear hand-me-down boot-cut jeans (“It was a big, shameful thing, growing up, not being able to afford the look I wanted and having to wear all my brother’s old clothes”, says Kiely). Most Normal, then, is a triumph, the bold work of a group who’ve taken the time to evolve their ideas, to deconstruct and reconstruct their music and rebuild it into something new, something challenging and infinitely rewarding. It’s a headphone masterpiece. It’s a majestic exploration of the infinite possibilities of noise. It’s a bold riposte to your parochial beliefs on whatever a pop song can or should be. It’s the best work these musicians have put to (mangled) tape.
The Irish band’s unrelenting third album, made with an arcade of pedals and processors, surges with electricity. Inside all of its noise is an indignant, surreal mania that gives it a twisted pop soul.
Tweaking their abrasive sounds, Gilla Band continue to double down on the chaos, resulting in Most Normal's typically confrontational and freeform excursions
Frontperson Dara Kiely’s language less resembles the mumblings of a person disconnected from reality than those of someone…
Gilla Band are in experimental mood on new album Most Normal, with an overwhelmingly high hit rate.
Dublin quartet Gilla Band have been making cathartic uneasy listening for over a decade now (previously under the name Girl Band), and their third album, Most Normal, continues where both its predecessors left off.
Most Normal by Gilla Band: an emphatic return from the Dublin rock scene's most innovative, difficult and rewarding group
Gilla Band’s gift for conjuring up new forms of auditory mayhem is the real star of the show on ‘Most Normal.’ Read our review.
Most Normal by Gilla Band (FKA Girl Band) album review by Adam Williams. The Irish band's album is now available via Rough Trade Records
Third album from the experimental Dublin quartet - who changed their name from Girl Band - features their best work yet