‘An Elegant/ Room Elephant/ Tusks in Brag-age/ Chomps Trunks the Age’

Girl Band, Going Norway

If you haven’t heard of Irish punk band Girl Band now is your chance to a) acquaint yourself or b) get the f*ck off this site. And you call yourself a music lover ….

We saw them years ago in Brooklyn, where they opened for Viet Cong (now Preoccupations) and it was life changing (see: above). They went on a hiatus for a bit, and then released their new album The Talkies, out on Rough Trade Records (September 2019).

Directed by Bob Gallagher directed, watch the music video for “Going Norway” below.

“‘Going Norway’ was one of the first tracks we finished, but the melody actually comes from a track that I wrote about 8 years ago. I saved that melody and brought it up when I didn’t have any ideas left, I was also doing a lot of mindfulness meditation around the time of it, so lyrically I decided not to use any pronouns within the track and the whole album – that came about when I came across this quote from the Buddha which was ‘Nothing is to be clung to as I, me or mine’ – and I removed all that in a way to kind of find an abstract world to live in.”

Vocalist Dara Kiely

Like most of Girl Band’s songs, the track pushes and pulls against itself, making the combative movement palpable. Go ahead and feel something.