Gilla Band have released another track from their forthcoming album Most Normal, following on from the album’s first preview track ‘Eight Fivers’.
‘Backwash’ was aired in recent Dublin residencies and gigs, and feels like the Dublin band are injecting some new sounds into their trademark, it’s a bit more wobbly and rhythmic than usual, without losing the identity they have established.
Listen / watch:
Dara, Gilla Band.
“The initial idea for the whole album was that it would loosely sound like a dream. We didn’t really stick to the brief but it lead us down different sonic avenues. ‘Backwash’ is one of the few tracks where the words represent a dream-like circumstance. The lyrics are from a stream-of-consciousness rant, weird imagery, and all that. The track is about attraction – fancying someone and not knowing what to say exactly. It’s an indirect love song, knowing you like someone but can’t quite articulate it. Thinking that you have already expressed your feelings, but like waking up from a dream you’ve forgotten what you actually have said or felt”
The single is available on 7″ limited to 120 copies.
The band’s third album is called Most Normal and is released on October 7th on Rough Trade Records.
Most Normal was self produced and recorded and mixed by the band’s Daniel Fox at Sonic Studios and their rehearsal place.
The album will be available on limited edition blue vinyl and an exclusive alt cover white vinyl, limited to 1,000 copies, and is now on pre-order.
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 basses Daniel Fox. “That felt like a fun route to go down, it was a definite influence.”
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, like bell-bottomed flares that got nowhere near my ankle,” says Kiely
Gilla Band – Most Normal tracklist.
- The Gum
- Eight Fivers
- Backwash
- Gushie
- Binliner Fashion
- Capgras
- The Weirds
- I Was Away
- Almost Soon
- Red Polo Neck
- Pratfall
- Post Ryan
Girl Band released the live album Live At Vicar Street since.
Gilla Band’s big Irish shows this year are at the National Stadium, Dublin on December 9th, and Empire, Belfast on December 15th 2022
Gilla Band tour dates
18/10/2022 Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
19/10/2022 SWG3, Glasgow
20/10/2022 O2 The Ritz, Manchester
22/10/2022 O2 Forum, London
23/10/2022 CHALK, Brighton
11/11/2022 Sonic City Festival, Kortrijk
12/11/2022 La Cartonnerie Club, Reims
13/11/2022 Le Marche Gare, Lyon
15/11/2022 Bogen F, Zurich
16/11/2022 Biko, Milan
17/11/2022 Strom, Munich
19/11/2022 Lido, Berlin
21/11/2022 Loppen, Copenhagen
22/11/2022 Knust, Hamburg
24/11/2022 Artheater, Cologne
25/11/2022 Maassilio, Rotterdam
26/11/2022 La Gaite Lyrique, Paris
09/12/2022 National Stadium, Dublin
15/12/2022 The Empire, Belfast
