Girl Band - The Talkies (Album Review)

 

Girl Band - The Talkies

(2019)

My copy: 2019 press by Rough Trade.

Nearly five whole years since their full-length debut, Girl Band unleashed the apocalyptic symphony of The Talkies: an album made out of violent shouts, dissonant howling guitar and pounding low-end frequencies. As otherworldly and ambitious as this transmission is, a lot of its more colorful moments are undercut by nebulous production choices. 

Deep breathing and low, looped synth radiate tension on “Prolix.” As the breathing becomes more and more labored, the seeds of dark themes are firmly planted. “Going Norway” affects the cymbals to sound closer to static while the vocals spout off with an angsty charisma.  The bass tones have been given the utmost care across the whole record, with thick syrupy walls of low-end carrying the mostly soupy mids and highs. What’s amazing is their ability to separate the sounds from the identity of the instruments: layers of shrieking noises could either be tremolo guitar or harsh synthesizers. What falls flat is how quiet and pushed back a lot of the grander effects are. 

“Shoulderblades” pans echoed cries in a vacuum while the main vocals issue raving announcements over industrial crashes and guitars that only verge on melody. A pounding kick drum is the payoff as the soundscapes twist and stretch themselves into hellish knots. Some of the most industrial barks are issued here, like a less repetitive version of Ramleh. There is a main vocal motif, though delivered in a psychotic manner. The band grows quiet and reflective, with electronic and psychedelic influence. One of the more normal guitar tones is heard repeating on “Couch Combover” before the bass is awakened from its slumber, releasing the song into a furious patchwork of noise. The vocals are at their most annoying here, but the bass gets groovy with stick clicks, ushering in another movement with quiet reversed vocals. 

The sweet ambiance bleeds into “Aibohphobia” where a ghostly voice calls above hidden muted instrumentals that only threaten to get loud. This track eventually gets crushed under the weight of lo-fi distortion. The most traditional drum pattern loops through all of “Salmon Of Knowledge” in which the bass shutters and disappears to accommodate affected vocals and moaning synths. The bass returns later, with calculated blasts like the sound of far off bombs under the most blatant guitar and vocal melody of the record. The song glitches and sputters before reinstating a peaceful drone to close. Girl Band are not interested in catchy melodies here, rather they shake down and wring out their arsenal of instruments to create frighteningly alien soundtracks. 

There are a series of shorter tracks on the B-side from “Akineston’s” immersive guitar sirens and sequenced synth to “Amygdala’s” traditional post-punk beatdown and finally the lulling ease of “Caveat” with gentle writing that shifts into a battered cage match of rattling percussion and powerful slams. “Laggard” transforms either sliding guitar or synth into a space-age alarm, building anxiety with loud tom fills and syncopated screeching. The futuristic electronic sounds feel fit for a dire escape from a crashing spacecraft. There are even moments where the vocals sing eerily, which is more unsettling than the shouting we’ve grown accustomed to by now. 

“Prefab Castle” is the masterpiece of the record, honing production tricks, composition and unique sounds into one harrowing audio experience. The bass begins by growling like an unseen animal that patiently stalks its prey before reverb floods the track, resetting intentions with mechanical whirring. A drum loop ignites things again with static noise and booming toms that unroll the carpet for the main vocal melody. The energy is that of an insane celebration, a gathering of psychopaths with pulsing buildups before everything is mangled by dissonant strings, as if the party had been dismantled by a brutal act of violence. An impressive array of samples and electronic sirens rearrange the song before a dark IDM beat warps into position, looping for the remainder of the track with the vocals. The album concludes with the nearly serene (by comparison) “Ereignis” which feels like a final endeavor to process the full experience. 

The Talkies is, when successful, a highly imaginative set of brutalist experiences. There are few distinctly memorable lines or melodies, rather the album is utterly captivating in the moment. The production sours a lot of the sound effects and high frequencies, which is unfortunate because what is hidden below the surface is truly exciting. Girl Band has done something far more interesting than contemporaries such as Black Midi or Black Country New Road: they have created an album that almost feels entirely separated from the image of a rock band. Through their bleak industrial sound, it is mainly the percussion and bass that tie everything back to the likes of rock subgenres. Where the aforementioned contemporaries fail to evoke, Girl Band forces a visceral discomfort - if only the final sound matched the production levels of these other so-called "experimental" bands.