Girl Band are great bunch of lads

It’s a Thursday night in trendy Shoreditch, in east London, and outside of one of the numerous cool-because-they-say-so pubs hidden away from the main street, there’s a queue to get in and see four lads from Ireland play loud rock music.

Dublin’s Girl Band headline above two local groups and are the reason why the Old Blue Last is overflowing.

Old Blue Last is small, grotty, and sweaty, but Girl Band will surely be saying goodbye to such tiny stages shortly. Lauded by the Guardian, NME and Vice, the four-piece played Eurosonic, Europe’s version of South By South West, earlier this month, where A&R men and festival bookers were peppered throughout the packed venues.

But Dara Kiely, Daniel Fox, Alan Duggan, and Adam Faulkner are taking it all in their stride. “It’s been a little strange, seeing the buzz,” says bassist, Fox, who, with stabbed strikes of his instrument, steals the show on new track, ‘Lawman’, which has sold out a 300-single run on Dublin’s Any Other City Records. “I don’t think it’s put any pressure on us, though. At the moment, we’re having a lot of fun working on new material.”

They played two shows at Eurosonic, in Groningen, an industry official showcase — “bit of chin scratching going on,” Fox says — and a day show in an art gallery. Spread around this were gigs across the UK and others in Europe (“no major hiccups, but turns out it’s surprisingly difficult to find the entrance to the Channel Tunnel on the French end”).

Girl Band are making fans in all the right places.

Theirs is a noise-addled groove, with Kiely’s piercing vocals — and they really do pierce; hope he has stocked up on the throat lozenges — and Alan Duggan’s guitar competing for attention with a variety of pedals and effects.

They have released two well-received EPs over the past few years, and a cover of DJ/producer Blawan’s track, ‘Why They Hide Their Bodies Under My Garage?’, early last year.

Now they’re letting a three-minute indie song breathe to become a six- or seven-minute thriller. It was a stunning cover and one on which ‘Lawman’ continues to build. “With the singles In My Head’ and ‘France 98’, we were trying to figure ourselves out,” says Daniel. “The newer material seems a bit more cohesive to us, building on a groove being a big part of that.”

On tour in Ireland this week and next, some members of Girl Band have college work to focus on for the next few months, alongside writing new tracks, before, presumably, taking the Irish and European festival circuit by storm. “We’ve a busy year planned for ourselves,” they say, to nobody’s surprise.

You might have guessed by now that Girl Band is a bit of a misleading moniker. Though it’s unlikely that any of the audience in the London pub left when they saw four young men struggle to the stage, one wonders if the name is going to come back and bite them in the future.

Daniel is not fussed. “It’s funny, for the amount of questions about it, we gave it so little thought. But yeah, I suppose it’s been a good talking point. Some people think it’s really stupid. They’re probably right.”

Girl Band play Bourke’s Bar in Limerick on Thursday, Jan 30, and Crane Lane in Cork on Saturday, Feb 1.