Four years on from their debut – and after three tours were cancelled due to health issues in the band – Irish quartet Girl Band rejoin the fray sounding invigorated. Coming back amid a wider post-punk scene that’s also as vital as it’s been in years, they stay true to the spirit of the genre: slipping through definition, resisting comfort, and ducking on to the dancefloor.
Their strongest work comes with studies in sustain and release, which form some truly magnificent songs. Prefab Castle is a great showcase of their affinity with a four-four pulse, evoking techno’s relentlessness (they once covered industrial minimalist Blawan) but, played on live drums, sounds like glam rock. After building for over three minutes, it kicks into gear on a sudden off-beat, for delayed gratification that again plays with the dynamics of dance music. Shoulderblades repeats the trick but to even greater effect, with a tyrannical glam stomp. These and other standouts such as Couch Combover have vocal lines by Dara Kiely that sound like the chants of a chain gang getting ready to make a break across the cornfield: steady, melodious, but with clenched energy. Sure enough, when the drums kick in and they run, it’s thrilling. When these top lines aren’t as interesting, two or three tracks veer into mere throat-clearing – literally in the case of the phlegm-flecked Amygdala – but overall this is a band that, by playing fast and loose with verse-chorus-verse, generate an addictive kind of noise.
