Belfast band Girls Names‘s third album ‘Arms Around A Vision’ released last year, was one of my favourite guitar albums of 2015 (it was in a select group of two). Abrasive, confrontational at times brutal yet always somehow alluring traveling down the motorik highway, scarred by brutal guitar sounds and dappled with synth sparks. It rattled with the ghosts of Iggy Pop, Bowie‘s Berlin and Germany’s Zero Group, exploring themes like nihilism, Russian constructive and artistic and human worth; its an urgent, vital brute of an record bristling with ideas and spite, its the kind of album The Horrors would love to make if only they were capable! We sent singer Cathal some questions on the eve of their UK tour and SXSW dates.
Hi, how are you today?
Hello. Good to great. On tour at the minute traveling through Sweden and not hungover but tired and greying by the second. Time is a cruel beast.
Why, Girls Names?
I’ll be able to say when we’re finished.
How did you meet each other? Would you say there were common bonds and
motivations that helped you form a band?
We met in various bars or shows or houses over the years. Belfast is really small. There’s not a lot to do but go to the pub. Drinking is heavily ingrained in our culture – socialising to enjoy life. It’s funny, though, that the Northern Irish State has some serious draconian ideas going on about alcohol. And when I say funny, I mean stupid. I for one have had some of my most important education in the pub – Music, Arts, politics, theology, psychology – it’s all in there. So, in short, we met in the pub. Common bonds originally were a need to create and to create adversely to the trends of bands in Belfast at the time. To do our thing and try to escape the poverty of boredom.
What musicians/writers/artists/places inspire you?
In terms of places, we say it time and time again but traveling Europe inspires us. Traveling without borders is the only way for humans to live; to live and not merely exist. We’re inspired by lots of musicians and artists. William Basinksi’s really blowing my mind at the minute. That last record Cascade/the deluge he put out last year has been stuck on a loop, so to speak. I’m mostly drawn to the more electronic and experimental end of music right now. A lot of ambient stuff. Traditional groups rarely do it for me these days. I flew over to London a couple of weeks back just to catch Craig Leon perform with a sting ensemble. That was really mesmerising and inspiring.
I read someone describe your sound as indie pop. This puzzled me. Do you think about terms like ‘indie’ when you are making music? I always thought of ‘independent’ as a spirit rather than a genre…
I think the term ‘Indie’ as you describe as an idea of independence is obviously totally devoid of its original meaning, and now just encompasses a very real and frightening square genre of dullard soft-spoken boy bands with guitars hell bent on careering their way to the Sunday Brunch closing slot.
The album is fantastic, it’s so abrasive and confrontational at times. Was this intentional and do you think there is a banality to much music that uses guitars right now?
Thank you! [laughter] I think I just touched on this. I actually really dislike the majority of contemporary ‘guitar’ bands. Their attitudes, their self-righteous demeanours, their clothes and shite guitars and shite shoes. Not to mention their banal music. I don’t listen to a lot of modern bands. It rarely does anything that sticks out. I can’t tell anymore what’s good or bad and for that reason, I just assume it’s all very bad. If I seem quite contradictory and possibly naive to think that we mightn’t be lumped in with this – don’t get me wrong, I ask questions of myself all the time – at least we’re questioning and trying to wade through the quagmire. We’ve always tried to experiment with sound in the studio – more so on the last record. The fact that the rock/guitar record that I’m really most excited about this year is by a little long haired pensioner sums it all up.
When did you form and what kind of evolution has your sound gone through to get to what we hear on ‘Arms Around A Vision’?
Girls names formed seven years ago and I was just a kid who hadn’t a clue. So seven years of cynicism, world-weariness, the music industry, a devastating relationship split and a brief battle with mental illness was really the backbone of this record. But it’s boring to read this as it sounds like a cliché. It’s a manic record, it’s confrontational and it’s honest. I don’t listen to it for what those songs possibly once meant to me.
What’s the music scene like in Northern Ireland currently?
I can’t really comment on a scene. Either I’m that bit older or else kids just don’t want to know about live music. A lot of venues have closed down in the last few years. None of us or our friends though think of it in terms of scenes anyway. We never really got involved with the back slapping of it all. It seems though like the art scene’s really emerging into a force, the one thing about Belfast is strange is that music and the visual arts rarely are seen to be aligned as one as opposed to say, Glasgow, where music has a more recognised influence in the greater art scene and vice versa. But places like, Framework, Platform and Catalyst, the Black Box have been paving the way providing spaces to bridge the gap and for outsider music to be performed and experienced. And also, new labels like Touch Sensitive and Satsuma’s Home Entertainments are providing outlets for documentation of these acts.
Your album has allusions to new wave, post-punk and krautrock sounds with a definite European shell, was there a sense that you were crafting your own world one that made your stand apart from other groups?
Not consciously, but definitely just ploughing down the terrains that we wanted to explore musically. I think I said in another interview last year that we’ve sonically separated ourselves from our original contemporaries. I don’t think anyone else put out a record that sounds remotely like ours in the last year. Where it leads us to now is still unknown, but I think the logical conclusions have not yet been reached.
I read that you were interested in Italian futurism, Russian constructivism, Germany’s Zero Group and both Neubaten and Bowie’s Berlin were the songs your attempt to distill these ideas in your own memorable way?
Yeah, it’s all distilled in there I suppose. As I’ve pointed out the reason this record aligns us more than ever to a ‘post-punk’ sound is the fact that we were pulling from and obsessing over the same influences and ideas… Bowie, Pop, Roxy Music et al. I think we’re inspired by artists and collectives who wanted to push things on or rip things apart and build it back up again. The group zero fascination started for me after seeing a Heinz Mack piece in the Ulster museum, Pyramid of light. It’s in the permanent collection and gets wheeled out from time to time. It’s a beautiful piece of sheet metal, meticulously hammered to draw out a pyramid depending on where you stand, the light source etc, each small rivet can change shade or appearance, in turn affecting the whole piece. I was really affected by it years ago on seeing it. That’s what great about the analog world and seeing things in the flesh and how they tangibly work and being able to directly recognise and emote with the creation of an other human. I reverted back to playing this crappy digital synth on this tour for economic, travel and space reasons and its not been the same. It sounds good but it’s hard to perform with, without feeling you’re phoning it in. I’ve this old crumar stringman that if it wasn’t so temperamental and half broken I’d have with me all the time but when you play it feels like an extension of yourself, you feel like your actually playing an instrument just as you would an acoustic one, taming it and precisely tuning it as you feel on impulse. Again it’s a much more physical and real idea and feeling. Now don’t get me wrong, there are numerous amazing things about the digital world and the democratisation of music being one in particular but I feel we’re losing the love and the understanding and recognition of each other. It’s so easy to communicate with each other but sometimes we’re not really engaging or saying anything worthwhile.
‘A Hunger Artist’ – you sing about what drives genuine inspiration and great art, struggle and desperation, do you think the current musicians in the mainstream lack this hunger at times?Probably to an extent but that song has many meanings. I see it more from a human aspect, not just music or musicians. It’s in my nature to question everything which has its pros and cons. It’s the duality of modern life and trying to have some semblance of what’s deemed a normal life where the schizophrenic idea of the Hunger Artist comes from. I’ve talked to so many musicians who have shared and struggled mentally with the strains and stresses of a life of touring, the anxieties of being disconnected from loved ones, and the financial implications of uncertainty, and nomadic necessities. It’s all right going away if your house is in order, as they say, but when you come back, that house certainly isn’t going to be any different and you have to deal with it or it’s going to snowball into something much worse and become very destructive and devastating for individuals and relationships and impact on both physical and mental health. Unfortunately, I have had to deal with that and face the devastating affects of a long term relationship blowing up in my face due to said anxieties and ever increasing depressive and irrational thought processes. But then again, love is this beautiful disease of the mind coursing a multitude of chemicals and hormones into our system and making us behave like very irrational people. As I’ve said there’s a lot of ideas on love at the core of this record, just not necessarily that obvious or overtly to the fore. Anyway, there’s a definite suspension of reality when you are on tour and time barely exists as a series of wake up times, travel times, soundchecks, stage times etc, and the in between time of waiting – silence in the van – gives you a lot of thinking time which can tip you over the edge, obviously not helped by sleep deprivation, alcohol, stimulants, chemicals and depressants concurrently running through your system. And so this is possibly where my idea of what the song comes from – at the minute anyway.
What is your view on art as a commodity does it matter to you if you can make a living doing this? Or as Iggy would say is the ‘dream’ and the art the most important thing?
Yeah, the art is the most important thing, the impulse to create and act upon and the fulfillment of that idea. It’s why I struggle to be happy as a musician because the moments of self-doubt in your own ability and the execution of these ideas really increase the more you get into practicing your art. I don’t want to stagnate or repeat myself, I want to push things along. The fact that you want to make a living and live out a happy existence doing what you want to do is certainly an impetus. I’m seven years into this project – which is a long time for a band. I’ve so much time and energy and blood and tears invested in it at this stage, I can’t really do much else for the time being. It’s funny you mention the word commodity. I’m reading this book on anarchism in the van at the minute and so much is relevant to me simply as a musician involved in the music business. Whether I like it or not, I am wholly guilty. Independent musicians, to an extent, certainly embodied certain practical realities of anarchist ideas and theories and the need for autonomous powers free of outside influences ie. the business state and the rejection of authority – and even just this idea of working for yourself and being self-sustainable. Unfortunately, we’re complicit in the cogs of the whole capitalistic and exploitative nature of music, but I’m obviously older and slightly more wise enough to recognise the bullshit and expect the sometimes banal and soul-destroying things you got to do in order to raise capital to make the art you want to pursue. It’s a real notion that I’ve been struggling with for the last few years. I’m really lucky I’m at this stage, but the gaps are huge and sometimes you do something like an industry showcase festival and you see that musicians, artists etc are sometimes just livestock to be bought and sold and shipped about from pillar to post. I just wish other musicians would wake up to this fact.
Whether I like it or not, I am wholly guilty. Independent musicians, to an extent, certainly embodied certain practical realities of anarchist ideas and theories and the need for autonomous powers free of outside influences ie. the business state and the rejection of authority – and even just this idea of working for yourself and being self-sustainable. Unfortunately, we’re complicit in the cogs of the whole capitalistic and exploitative nature of music, but I’m obviously older and slightly more wise enough to recognise the bullshit and expect the sometimes banal and soul-destroying things you got to do in order to raise capital to make the art you want to pursue. It’s a real notion that I’ve been struggling with for the last few years. I’m really lucky I’m at this stage, but the gaps are huge and sometimes you do something like an industry showcase festival and you see that musicians, artists etc are sometimes just livestock to be bought and sold and shipped about from pillar to post. I just wish other musicians would wake up to this fact.
The ominous ‘I Was You’ teeters between self-revulsion and self-empowerment, is there a sense of using music as a way of releasing existential confusion with the world?
Personally, music is definitely a cathartic experience and a need to release the fears and the angers and the anxieties through expression. But it also my job as a musician to share and raise the questions which I feel are needed to be shared. As for self-revulsion and self-empowerment, I think I’d be repeating myself, after all I’ve said in this interview but you more or less hit the nail on the head(s).
What can people expect to witness at a Girls Names live show?
You can expect energy, you can expect release, intensity and it will be loud and sometimes abrasive. But most importantly it will be genuine.
What’s the best band you’ve ever played with?
I’m going to say on a technicality, The Pop Group. They were on the line-up of Primavera when we played back in 2012 so although we didn’t share a stage we at least shared a festival site and a poster. I’ve been a massive fan of them for years and it just blew me away to be a part of that.
Could you give our readers a potted history of the band before you released this album?
2009- Cathal Cully, Neil Brogan. Alcohol, naivety and a broken phone. CF Records and tapes
2010 – EPs on Captured Tracks, Tough Love. Claire Miskimmin on bass. The UK opens its doors. Slumberland is on the blower.
2011 – Dead to Me. Set back. Frustration and starting again. Love enters the stage. Italy awaits.
2012 – A return form exile. Speakeasy students union. Philip Quinn on guitar and keys. Europa unlocks the gates and we don’t look back. Heavy times recording The New Life. The year ends on happier times.
2013 – Transfer window. Gib Cassidy in for Neil Brogan to Sea Pinks. The New life. Sharing magazine pages with the bad seeds. Trans Europa Express. Communist insurrections with Jim Heaney. American things – Tex. Cracks.
2014 – Europa endless. Donegal writing binge. Heavier times yet recording what will be arms around a vision. Lie in wait.
2015 – Daniel Rejmer on the mix wizard. Ill health and waiting. Europa, sorry we have missed you. Suede heads and hair bleach. Arms around a vision. Tour like motherfuckers. Phil Quinn grows out his hair.
2016 – Europa Endless once more and we shall see.
‘Reticence’ has this nagging, tremulous coating that’s alluring and tuneful, yet brutal and dark, was this intentional and what was the inspiration for the song?
I’ve probably touched upon the ideas already for this song. But, that in particular, was brought up from the nagging anxieties, irrationalities and insecurities of love and the possibility that that love may have been unconditional. The Jekyll and Hyde notion of the thought processes of this are directly heard from the structure and the lyrics. And it’s left open-ended purposefully.
How does the song writing process work, do you work up the sounds then work on the inspiration for the lyrics and themes in isolation? Or does it vary?
It varies. Mostly it’s the music first and then the words get built on top. We locked ourselves in the countryside for a week to write most of the last record. Although I’ll have a bunch of writings to dabble about with, one idea may lead onto something else. A kind of cut up technique was employed for the last record, where I married reams of pages of banked up lyrics with more impulsive expressions and gut feelings closer to the actual time of recording. Sometimes there’s a glimmer of haste which marries the words to the music. Music is fascinating in that it depends on which idea you subscribe to – Whether or not the words mean anything. If they’re merely another form of instrumentation or employed to convey a message or both.
And finally, what are your future plans?
We’ve another few weeks of this European tour. Then its SXSW in March and shed load of European festivals throughout spring and summer. We’ve solo agendas or other commitments on the go this year, too, which will be factored in. Whether or not new Girls Names music will see the light of day for some time remains to be seen so I’m not willing to comment on that. Time is a cruel beast.
Girls Names play the following dates:
Feb 17th – The Boileroom, Guildford
Feb 18th – Soup Kitchen, Manchester
Feb 19th – The Lexington, London
Feb 20th – Ramsgate Music Hall, Kent
Feb 21st – Pony Up @ Norwich Arts Centre, Norwich
Feb 22nd – Sunflower Lounge, Birmingham
Feb 23rd – Electric Circus, Edinburgh
Feb 24th – The Hug and Pint, Glasgow
Feb 25th – Roisin Dubh, Galway
Feb 26th – Cyprus Avenue, Cork
Feb 27th – Upstairs at Dolans, Limerick
Mar 15th-20th – SXSW Festival, Austin, Texas, US
