Gilla band are pleased to announce their new album Most Normal to be released on Rough Trade Records on October 7th, 2022. This is the band’s third album; self produced and recorded and mixed by the band’s Daniel Fox at Sonic Studios and their rehearsal place. The album will be available on limited edition blue vinyl and an exclusive alt cover white vinyl, limited to 1,000 copies.
You can preorder the album here https://gillaband.ffm.to/mostnormal
First single “Eight Fivers” announces itself in that typical Gilla Band way where the lyrics often feel abstracted from the music. Dara’s voice is two opposing forces at once: it’s the melodic cry yearning and dancing over the driving beat. In some ways it’s the album’s most memorable track for how instant it sounds and simple it feels, however, its idiosyncratic enough to create its own peculiar feel. On the track Dara says “Eight Fivers is about 40 quid. It’s about being out of touch with modern circumstances while feeling socially limited. Never fitting in and kind of proud of it. Stuck with what I have and happy for it. Being grateful and not fashionable, self-conscious and too aware of what is lacking. Accepting that jealousy played a big role in my life but trying not to feed into it.”
For their first album as Gilla Band, the foursome has redrawn their own paradigm.
Covid lockdown robbed Gilla Band of any opportunity to try the new material out live, but the pandemic also incinerated any idea of a deadline for the new album. They were free to tinker at leisure, to rewrite and restructure and reinvent tracks they’d cut – to, as drummer Adam Faulkner puts it, “pull things apart and be like, ‘Let’s try this. We could try out every wild idea.”
The group also fell under the spell of modern hip-hop, “where there’s really heavy-handed production and they’re messing with the track the whole time,” says basses Daniel Fox. “That felt like a fun route to go down, it was a definite influence.”
The common thread holding Most Normal’s ambitious avant-pop shapes together is frontman Dara Kiely. Throughout, he’s an antic, antagonistic presence, barking wild, hilarious, unsettling spiels, babbling about smearing fish with lubricant or dressing up in bin-liners or having to wear hand-me-down boot-cut jeans (“It was a big, shameful thing, growing up, not being able to afford the look I wanted and having to wear all my brother’s old clothes, like bell-bottomed flares that got nowhere near my ankle,” says Kiely
Tour Dates below
16/07/2022 Puch Open Air, Jetzendorf
18/07/2022 Boomtown, Gent
29/07/2022 All Together Now Festival, Waterford
06/08/2022 Absolutely Free Festival, Genk
11/08/2022 –
13/08/2022 Haldern Pop Festival, Haldern
09/09/2022 Misty Fields Festival, Asten Heusden
17/09/2022 Wide Eyed Festival, Leicester
15/10/2022 Future Days Festival, Birmingham
16/10/2022 Trinity, Bristol
18/10/2022 Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
19/10/2022 SWG3, Glasgow
20/10/2022 O2 The Ritz, Manchester
22/10/2022 O2 Forum, London
23/10/2022 CHALK, Brighton
11/11/2022 Sonic City Festival, Kortrijk
12/11/2022 La Cartonnerie Club, Reims
13/11/2022 Le Marche Gare, Lyon
15/11/2022 Bogen F, Zurich
16/11/2022 Biko, Milan
17/11/2022 Strom, Munich
19/11/2022 Lido, Berlin
21/11/2022 Loppen, Copenhagen
22/11/2022 Knust, Hamburg
24/11/2022 Artheater, Cologne
25/11/2022 Maassilio, Rotterdam
26/11/2022 La Gaite Lyrique, Paris
09/12/2022 National Stadium, Dublin
15/12/2022 The Empire, Belfast
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