by Dominic Acito (@mycamgrlromance)
Dublin noise rockers made their much-welcomed return after four years with the new album The Talkies, feeling like a release of tension that is at times poetic and humorous. With lyrics that are often surrealist including mentions of RL Stein, acrobats stabbing orcas, references to Irish mythology, and anagrams of the names of band members, The Talkies is an album that grows on you with repeated listens and time spent with the lyrics sheet.
The album opens with the track “Prolix,” a meditative-like throbbing instrumentation that evokes the sounds of heartbeat in your brain and provides the background to the sound of heavy breathing. This breathing begins to quicken in what the band say was a recording of vocalist Dara Kiely in the throes of a panic attack. The sounds of the fight or flight response gone haywire is the perfect introduction to an album of industrial/post-punk cathartic release of the tensions one accumulates in modern city living. While one cannot outpace or extinguish one’s anxieties by brute force alone, this tension can be released, as the next track reveals with a palpable energy.
“Going Norway,” the second single from the release, has a satisfying set of lyrics that feel like modern day tongue twisters making reference to street signs as well as psychiatrist slang. Singer Dara Kiely’s vocal inflections throughout the album bring to mind Mark E. Smith but with a youthful, vital energy and less of a focus on the self. Kiely has also made it a point to create an entire album devoid of the use of pronouns.
The first single of the album “Shoulderblades” features drums that sound like the hissing of a city bus’ hydraulics setting the bus down and bass playing that brings to mind the sound of a car accelerating in the distance, making Girl Band sound much like the bustle of the modern metropolitan city of Dublin they hail from. Kiely makes reference to Dutch Gold (cheap Irish pilsner for you yanks) and Ed Mordake, the two-faced man. The track “Aibohphobia” cements the surrealist feel of the album and is a song which gets its name from the slang term for fear of palindromes and it is just that, a song which every line is a palindrome.
While it’s difficult to pick a favorite song on this album, the longest track “Prefab Castle” is certainly a contender. It’s a song that transforms. “Ereignis” delivers the perfect end bumper to this album. It felt like it has the same catchy calming feeling that companies make hold music out of to calm potentially angry customers. They release you of your frustration and allow you out of the atmosphere of The Talkies and back into the wide world.
Overall, The Talkies is an album that satisfies all around, with a contagious energy that makes it an enduring album to listen to if you want to lose yourself in the maelstrom of sound that is at times almost danceable. It is an even more pleasing listen if you take the time to examine the lyrics and artistic direction.