In anticipation of Gilla Band’s new album, Most Normal, I connected with guitarist, Alan Duggan, over Zoom to discuss their new record, changing their name, and the evolution of the post-punk scene.

Prior to the announcement of their new album, the last time that Gilla Band had been thrust into the musical spotlight was last November, when they chose to change their name, having been Girl Band up to that point. While it was clear that they felt it was the right decision, the attention that it received was possibly greater than the band might have wanted, with a reaction that included a level of Instagram trolling.

“We all wanted to change it, so we did,” Alan tells me. “We always knew that there would be the reaction that it got, that wasn’t really surprising. What was surprising was how, on Instagram, it started getting almost taken over by people who had probably never heard of the band. But then it died down, and we’re fine with it. When we were going to change it, we started out looking at completely different words, but we felt it would be too weird if we were suddenly called ‘The Caterpillars’ or something like that, so we thought it would be good to keep it as a ‘G’ word. ‘Gilla’ is from old Irish, and doesn’t really mean anything anymore, it was a given name for people, and so we felt that it’d work, and it’d be an easier transition over.”

Gilla Band’s last full-length project, The Talkies, was released in October 2019, almost three years before Most Normal. However, while three years has become a longer-than-average gap, the previous gap following their debut album, Holding Hands with Jamie, had been more than four years – long enough to be considered a hiatus.

“It was interesting, because we had our last shows at the start of 2017, and then didn’t do anything for almost two years until making the next album, The Talkies. S, it was interesting coming back, because in that meantime, something that was very flattering was hearing other bands say that we were a big influence on them, which was surreal, and a real kind of honour – it’s probably one of the best things to have other bands feel inspired by what you do. But it was also strange because we put the record out, then we played possibly ten shows, and then it was Covid, and it was like back into hiatus again.

“It was interesting to see though that post-punk had become more of a thing that people were writing about, particularly with the focus on Ireland, like suddenly Ireland was cool!”

Having listened to the first two singles released ahead of Most Normal (Eight Fivers and Backwash), what jumped out was the change in production style compared to Gilla Band’s last two albums, with those having more of a ‘live’ feel to them, whereas these two tracks have more of a stylised production.

“With the first record, Holding Hands with Jamie, we wanted to do a big, roomy record and make it as close to the live sound as possible, which it does, but maybe a live show in a cave or something like that. Then for The Talkies, we wanted it to be a lot more hands-on produced. But when we went to this house to produce it, they had a big cellar, and when you played anything in there it had this incredible reverb, and we felt it would be a shame not to use that, so it ended up sounding big and roomy again. So, for this one, we decided to go a lot more heavy- handed with the production end of it and not worry about doing it live until we have to. This was also the first time where we weren’t all in the room for all of the recording process.

It’s a totally different world of creativity where, as opposed to just working on guitar sounds and bass sounds or whatever and just putting them together, we could hear everything that was getting added to the tracks as it was going – we weren’t all playing in a room and then just going to mix it.” The production of the new material also seemed to be taking more influence from hip-hop and dance music, so I was curious to hear if that influence was deliberate.

“In terms of hip-hop, a big record that was influential on this one for us was Some Rap Songs by Earl Sweatshirt, with the relatively shorter songs where you’re just kind of thrown from one song to the next, and there are big filter sweeps in songs where it’s muted for a split second and then comes back. Then with dance music and techno, I think that’s always been an influence on us, where you can just take things in and pull things out. We’ve never written with a kind of forced structure, like ‘Oh what will we do for the middle 8?’ – we just don’t write like that. It just always felt easier to follow a groove, build intensity and drop it.”

While Gilla Band writes in a very collaborative manner, with each of them taking the lead on different studio sessions, and developing melodies and rhythms together, all of the lyrics are written by Dara Kiely, the lead singer. With this record, they added an extra layer to their writing process, using the concept of dreams as a jumping- off point.

“When we started this record, we had this idea that it would be cool if it functioned like a kind of dream – not like an ethereal thing but like you’re walking down the street, and everything’s clear but just a little bit blurry, you look at a man and he has a hat, then he doesn’t have a hat, then he does again, that kind of dream logic. This was cool cos it meant we could throw most of the rules out. Like when you’re in a dream, and a tiger walks into your room, you’re not like ‘Woah, what the fuck!’, you’re just like ‘Alright, fair enough’. With that as a starting point, we could take the songs, and then put the production on top and really distort them, rip them apart, or mess with the vocal sounds. We didn’t stick to that brief necessarily, I don’t think the record sounds like that, but as a creative tool to start with, that was helpful.”

The lyrics, however, are not at all associated with this theme, with Alan’s interpretation of Dara’s writing suggesting more of a focus on growing up and entering one’s thirties.

“Lyrically, I know that that was also a useful jumping-off point for Dara, as he could do more surrealist lyrics. But what we noticed is that he talks about the dentist quite a lot in the lyrics, there are a lot of references to sea creatures, but then generally there’s a common theme of getting a bit older, and that just being kind of a mundane thing, not necessarily good or bad. When we put The Talkies out, we were all 28, then we went into lockdown and now we’re all 31, so we kind of lost the end of our twenties. Now we’re in our thirties and all you think about is going into your forties, it can be a little weird. There’s a lot in it about how you have to grow up a little bit now, even though you might not be very good at it. That’s how I interpret it myself anyway.”

Gilla Band released their third full- length album, Most Normal, on 7th October via Rough Trade.