For ten years, Belfast’s Girls Names consistently underscored their status as one of the country’s best bands. From 2010’s You Should Know By Now to what would become their feature-length swansong, 2018’s Stains on Silence, Cathal Cully and co. made music that, unlike so many contemporary bands, warranted the albeit loose descriptor post-punk.
Having disbanded last year, the band have briefly re-emerged to release Demos: 2009-2012. Over 37 tracks, it’s a fascinating, true-to-life release, documenting the creative process of a band whose sound wonderfully evolved over the years. As posthumous, feature-length curios go, this one is worth delving into.
“I hear the walls of each room, in which they were recorded,” Cully said. “I see the heat of our breath in the cold of the winter. I can smell the damp of the carpets, see the paint peeling from the walls and smiles on our faces before anything had to be too serious. For most of these ‘as live’ recorded tracks, I feel the nervous energy, the synergy and vibrations of a group of people playing music together for one common goal – the song. Possibly something that wasn’t as easy to recreate once we were always put into a real studio with everything separated by rooms, microphones, masses of overdubs and the added pressure of money haemorrhaging by the second.”
Stream/download the release below. 100% of today’s Bandcamp digital sales will go to directly to Black Lives Matter.
