Gilla Band played Sonia – 2/24
Irish noisemakers Gilla Band headlined a rowdy night in Central Square with support from Pure Adult and Kal Marks.
You could loosely associate Gilla (formerly Girl) Band with the British/Irish post-punk revival wave encompassing the likes of Black MIDI, Squid or Black Country, New Road (a scene that NME apparently coined as “crank wave” at some point, I’ve just recently learned), but such an easy reach betrays the limits of simple regional categorizing. For one thing, having formed in 2011 and released their debut EP the following year, GB predate much of that scene; but more importantly, they bring something…different to the table. There are grooves and wordy hooks to be found amidst Gilla Band’s sonic shrapnel, but at the end of the day, they’re one of the more caustic bands out there to be headlining midsize rock clubs internationally. Their 2022 release Most Normal – a disorienting 37 minutes of harsh, industrial capital-N-noise-rock – is a case-in-point. Few are currently doing it quite as confrontationally as them.
The four-piece channeled all of the paranoid energy and towering volume of that new record into a ferocious headlining set at Sonia on Friday night. Vocalist Dara Kiely played both leader and anti-frontman, often howling his impressionistic lyrics with his back turned to the crowd as guitarist Alan Duggan, bassist Daniel Fox and drummer Adam Faulkner pounded out lurching songs that bordered on the atonal whilst maintaining their danceable pulse. The crowd, which had to be close to a sellout, gave them plenty of movement in return. The whole affair peaked with set-closer “Why They Hide Their Bodies Under My Garage?”, a take on UK techno DJ Blawan’s Fugees-flipping track originally covered on the band’s 2015 Early Years EP. Kiely worked the titular question into a sort of mantra over a deranged dance-punk jam from the band that built to a furious conclusion amplified by a barrage of strobing stage light. It was surely among the most exhilarating ten minutes of live music of this young year.
Opening the show were tourmates Pure Adult, whose experimental, two-vocalist post-punk turned to a loopier side of the genre, sold mostly on the band’s affably high energy. And for the local contingent, the mighty Kal Marks delivered one of their reliably tight, tense sets to open the night. Scroll down for photos of all three bands.
