The Dublin band Girl Band started off in school, quite surprisingly, as an indie-rock band that was influenced by The Smiths and The Strokes. As their style developed, so too did the individual band members, progressing and evolving their music-playing. Speaking to The University Times just a day before they kicked off their tour through the UK, Ireland and Japan, 25 year-old lead singer Dara Kiely spoke about the band’s initial growth. He explains: “We were messing about one hungover afternoon, and my unexpectedly impressive scream was discovered while writing and playing ‘Pancake Tuesday’ and ‘Christmas Morning’.”
Kiely started writing lyrics at a young age, without seeing them as such until he was about twelve or thirteen. He remembers writing his first song at the age of five with his fifteen-year-old brother, singing an old lyric “animals don’t wear underpants” and laughing as he recalls “that was it. I thought it was genius”. It was then that Kiely discovered his love for picking up eccentric phrases and documenting the things going on around him through his ferociously unusual and imaginative lyrics. He explains, however, that he’s writing differently this time around: “I had a psychotic episode which was a major influence on the album [Holding Hands with Jamie], for the writing alone, but [it was] only an influence because it happened at that time. Things are changing.”
It is evident that Girl Band’s creative process is heavily influenced by real time, an aspect of their work that makes their sound so genuine. The theme of food heavily dominates their album Holding Hands with Jamie, with Kiely screaming “Nutella” repetitively and featuring songs called “Pears for Lunch” and “Fucking Butter”. However, to his genuine dismay, he was told by his bandmates that condiments, fruits or any kind of food for that matter could not be in the songs. “They told me I’m not allowed to write about food, I gave them new lyrics and they said no more”, he says.
Paired with the intense and humorous music is a collection of equally sinister music videos, with several from their most recent album directed by close friend Bob Gallagher. Their exceptionally challenging and creative cover of Blawan’s techno track “Why They Hide Their Bodies Under My Garage” was arranged in order to bulk out their content for their US tour. Kiely recalls ringing Gallagher and saying: “Well, we have one song that is eight minutes long that has one lyric and one note. Do your worst.” Gallagher and Kiely ended up building a morgue in the studio as a set for the video, curating a manically dystopian world. Diverging from the conventional is important to Girl Band and is what makes their psychedelic sound so unique.
Rather than suiting routine sound as a way of avoiding a clouded musical lens, the band started to create their own, individual style through musically theoretical methods: avoiding writing choruses, a standard in most songwriting, or creating 20 second or 12-minute songs. Although inspired by punk, Kiely explains that attempting to place the band in a genre only serves to limit it and that their niche music is a departure from the boundaries of categorisation.
Despite the band’s past misfortunes with illness, forcing several gig cancellations, Kiely is excited about the plans for their upcoming tour: “The first time we played in Bristol, there was just about 12 people in the audience but this year we’ve completely sold out.” In the face of illness, Girl Band’s dedication to performing becomes incredibly obvious. They cancel only as a last resort and a relentless work ethic is a testament to the band’s love for their art. This ethic was plain to see at their last live show at Metropolis Festival, an enthralling mass of cacophonous sound that drove a wave of energy throughout the crowd, all despite several interruptions from Kiely’s sprinting offstage to get sick. However, the crowd never lost their velocity, a true sign of Girl Band’s artistic and performance mastery.
With Girl Band’s swelling success, their niche sound is ricocheting off the walls of the Irish underground music scene and capturing attention internationally. After the UK and Ireland, they will be performing a few gigs in Tokyo, one of these nights alongside The Pixies. For now though, you can catch them playing in Dublin’s Vicar Street on February 17th, featuring Lynched and Rusangano Family with DJ sets from the legendary Geoff Travis of Rough Trade Records, Aisling O’Riordan and James Vincent McMorrow, all in aid of Pieta House.
