Ireland’s Gilla Band today share a new single and video, ‘Sports Day‘. Their ground breaking new album Most Normal, which featured highly in Albums of The Year lists at Fader, The Guardian, Pitchfork and Irish Times is out now via Rough Trade.
The video for ‘Sports Day‘ was directed by Michael Speed who also directed their previous video ‘Post Ryan‘ and follows previous singles ‘Backwash‘ and ‘Eight Fivers‘ which had videos directed and animated by Mortis Studios.
Frontman Dara Kiely explains his thinking behind the lyrics on the song, “Sports Day is about announcing embarrassing facts (thankfully via a distortion mic). Weird lies you’ve told as a child, poor skills you once thought you were great at and repetitive lines that you still bring up to the same people. The subject matter contains: me being 12 and coming to terms with being crap at football and would never be a professional. At a similar age; having this peculiar routine in which I used to say goodnight to my sports day medals (including kissing my participation ones) before going to bed. Essentially being strangely proud of my achievements of simply showing up. Linking that out of depth feeling to the modern day in the shape of not knowing how to turn on the PA (or anything music equipment related for that matter). Also secretly admiring soap operas while constantly talking about The Beatles to anyone who would listen.”
For their first album as Gilla Band, the foursome redrew 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.
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 bassist Daniel Fox. “There was a conscious effort to be more direct this time, whether it was with the lyrics or the music and with the production – for everything to be a lot more ‘here’ and to feel more poppy, and then really try to mess with it and subvert it”.
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.
Most Normal is Gilla Band’s third album; it was self-produced, and recorded and mixed by bassist Daniel Fox at Sonic Studios and their rehearsal place.
Stream / Download ‘Sports Day’: https://gillaband.ffm.
Stream / Download Most Normal: https://gillaband.ffm.
Gilla Band – ‘Sports Day’ (Official Video)
Stream / Download: https://gillaband.
Gilla Band – Most Normal
1.The Gum
2. Eight Fivers
3. Backwash
4. Gushie
5. Binliner Fashion
6. Capgras
7. The Weirds
8. I Was Away
9. Almost Soon
10. Red Polo Neck
11. Pratfall
12. Post Ryan
