Girl Band - Paul
- Review by James McGregor
Info: The third release off last year’s album, Holding Hands With Jamie, is 'Paul', another clear reminder that Girl Band are continue to provide one of the most refreshing sounds in music at the moment. This one opens with what can be loosely described as a bassline, and a strict, Tom-based 4/4 drum beat. This song is a fantastic example of how a rhythm section can hook the listener with trance-like repetition. Singer, Dara Kiely, then delivers some of his most poignant lines, including the eerily bizzare "How many bulbs does it take to screw a light in?"
The song takes you on a 7-minute rollercoaster through anticipation, with the long build up at the beginning, through anxiety, with the screaming guitars at roughly the 4-minute mark, with Kiely forcing the realisation of the inherent absurdity of daily life upon you in a tone that flits between apathetic and ferocious.
The emotional element is really where the beauty of the band lies for me. Kiely said in an interview he gave that; "there are no throwaway lyrics", and this transforms the seemingly ridiculous stream of consciousness into a verbal articulation of a young Irish man’s meltdown. This isn’t in the sort of pseudo-deep, but actually garbage, way that seems to be so prevalent in music these days. This is much more real. If we don’t understand it's because Kiely doesn’t expect us to, because we haven’t gone through his experience, and so he warns us at the beginning; "better not ask".
http://girlband.ie/
