Overnight, Ireland’s Girl Band shared their third single ‘Salmon of Knowledge’. This comes two weeks ahead of their long-awaited second album The Talkies out via Rough Trade Records / Remote Control Records on September 27th 2019, releasing almost 4 years to the day of their critically acclaimed debut LP Holding Hands with Jamie, of which Pitchfork wrote, “it’s hard to think of another guitar-based band conjuring fear this exhilarating and volume this rapturous.”
Praise for Girl Band
“Of the current crop of noisey young bands emerging from Ireland, it’s Girl Band who punch the hardest” – Record Collector – 5 stars
“Their second album ‘The Talkies’… it’s a knock-out, even better than their debut” – Loud & Quiet
“One of the biggest comebacks of 2019” – Mary Anne Hobbs (6 Music)
‘Salmon of Knowledge’, a story taken from Irish mythology and once a contender for the album title, was recorded in a more conventional way compared to the rest of the album, but by no means would this assumption be obvious. Sandwiched between the intensity of instrumental tracks ‘Aibohphobia‘ and ‘Akineton‘, the listener is lured into a false sense of security.
Lyrically, the song is an abstract stream of conscious rant; however, it is the physical weight of sound that brings these lyrics into existence – just as much is expressed in Dara Kiely’s yowls, screams and drones as in the words themselves.
The sound of the record mirrors the distorted realism of Kiely’s lyrics. To take life’s monotony and bring it into the realm of the absurd simply by exposing it; to look at the every day, then to look at it again/and again/and again/until it becomes swollen and distorted to the point of surrealism…
Girl Band – The Talkies
2. Going Norway
3. Shoulderblades
4. Couch Combover
5. Aibophobia
6. Salmon of Knowledge
7. Akineton
8. Amygdala
9. Caveat
10. Laggard
11. Prefab Castle
12. Ereignis
