• Watch: Girls Names – A Hunger Artist

    August 26, 2015 - By 

    With its wonderfully droll pisstake intro transporting us right back to an age of super-awkward 80s TV interviews, the video for Girls Names‘ ‘A Hunger Artist’ is a sparse, brilliantly realised, perfectly self-contained little no man’s land where their music couldn’t serve any more aptly as a soundtrack. A highlight from the band’s forthcoming third studio album, Arms Around a Vision, the track is a sneering and gallant slab of burrowing post-punk (yes, we went “there”) with a payoff that marries Magazine and Gary Numan at their most utterly resolute. Girls Names kick off another string of Europeans shows at Belfast’s Empire Music Hall on…

  • Stream: Cruising – Cruising EP

    August 11, 2015 - By 

    One of our collective favourite Irish bands, post-punk supergroup Cruising – featuring current and former members of Girls Names, September Girls, Sea Pinks & Logikparty – have unveiled their eponymous debut EP. Released through Tough Love Records on August 14, the first 100 of the 300 12″ pressings have been printed on hot pink vinyl, available to pre-order here. The EP was recorded across two nights in Dublin’s Guerrilla Studios and mixed in Belfast’s Start Together, where much of the Cruising membership have previously recorded. Blending garage & psych riffery very much through the filter of early ’80s post-punk – à la Joy Division, Magazine…

  • Stream: Girls Names – A Hunger Artist

    July 9, 2015 - By 

    Having just returned from a string of European dates, Girls Names have unveiled ‘A Hunger Artist’, the latest single to be taken from their forthcoming third album, Arms Around a Vision. Assumingly taking its title from Franz Kafka’s 1922 short story of the same name, the track – quite possibly our favourite Girls Names effort to date – sees frontman Cathal Cully confront a life lived “hand in mouth.” Elaborating, he said, “Most guitar music now is just a playground for the rich middle classes, and it’s really boring and elitist. We’re elitist in our own way, in that we’re on our own…

  • Track Record: Gib Cassidy (Girls Names)

    June 25, 2015 - By 

    When we came up with the idea for Track Record as a feature, Gib Cassidy was top of our list. He has spent years working in all the best record shops in Dublin and even set up his very own, Elastic Witch (sadly missed) so his taste is unparalleled. We’re delighted we’ve finally pinned him down due to his busy schedule playing with Girl Names for a rummage through his records. Here, he selects the key choices representing his broad collection, from Arthur Russell to Alice Coltrane. Photos by Aaron Corr. The Slits – Cut (Island, 1979) The Slits debut album is…

  • Stream: Girls Names – Reticence

    June 1, 2015 - By 

    Three months on from the release of eleven-minute post-punk odyssey ‘Zero Triptych’, Girls Names have re-emerged with one of the their strongest tracks to date, ‘Reticence’. With guitars returning to centre-stage from the off, the track unravels from a scourging intro to reveal a band exuding an air of confidence in the latest manifestation of their constantly evolving yet always instantly recognisable sound. Stream the track – taken from the band’s forthcoming album Arms Around a Vision – below.

  • Stream: Girls Names – Zero Triptych

    March 26, 2015 - By 

    Having released a teaser a couple of weeks back, Girls Names have re-emerged with eleven-minute post-punk odyssey in three parts, ‘Zero Triptych’. Set for 12″ release via Tough Love, the track – bearing an expansive, evolving sound a million miles from the surf-pop of their 2011 debut album, Dead To Me – is inspired by the band’s discovery of the Group Zero art movement, a group of artists founded by Heinz Mack and Otto Piene. Speaking to the Fader, the Cathal Cully-fronted band said: “[This] is our ode to the masters of light and shade – Mack, Piene and Uecker aka…

  • Monday Mixtape: Claire Miskimmin (Girls Names/Cruising)

    January 26, 2015 - By 

    Following on from Aghagallon singer-songwriter Ciaran Lavery and And So I Watch You From Afar guitarist Niall Kennedy, the latest willing subject of Monday Mixtape is Claire Miskimmin ofGirls Namesand Cruising. Traversing U.S goth rock pioneers Christian Death, Melbourne garage punk five-piece Total Control, Detroit post-punk quartet Protomartyr and more, the ten-track playlist is a half-hour sojourn of wonderfully doom-laden proportions. Cruising play Belfast’s Menagerie on March 14 as part of Sunglasses After Dark. Claire Miskimmin DJs at her night, Bad Vibes, at Belfast’s Woodworkers every second Thursday night. If you like what you hear below, make sure to hit it up this…

  • Gigs of the Week: Gifted, Bob Log III, Girls Names, Yule, Cian Nugent, Sissy

    December 3, 2014 - By 

    Ho, ho, ho-w are you? Sorry, that was terrible. Let’s try that again. How are you? Good? Good. Here’s five gigs happening over the next few days that we were really think you should make a concerted effort to attend. Happy Hanukkah. Gifted: Ciaran Lavery & more @ The Empire, Belfast – Thursday, December 4 Yet another first-rate bill by the acoustically-inclined folks at Gifted, Aghagallon songwriting extraordinare Ciaran Lavery will headline the latest installment of the night at Belfast’s Empire on Thursday, December 4. Also on the bill is John Blek, Travis is a Tourist and Orchid Collective.   Sissy,…