Over their three-set oeuvre, the Dublin-based Gilla Band have trafficked in jagged, lurching, fragmented noise forays. Singer Dara Kiely—juggling wry observations, glossolalic confessions, and meme-like nonsensicalities—operates as a hyper-vigilant trickster, gyrating amidst the artifacts of contemporary life.
If Kiely fleshed out his agitated persona on 2022’s Most Normal, he cranks the panic volume another notch or two on the band’s new album, Pugnello. The instrumentalists—guitarist Alan Duggan, bassist Daniel Fox, and drummer Adam Faulkner—have further honed their caustic pivots and serrated crescendos. The result is a set that shows Gilla Band navigating darkly comedic cum fatalistic gestalts more seamlessly, revelling in tableaux that point to both high-brow and tortured-slacker sensibilities.
On opener “The Angelus”, Duggan’s flanger-soaked guitar sounds like it’s sawing through metal. Kiely is self-consciously mordant, as he invokes various post-capitalistic dislocations and depravities. When he refers to whatever Western country he has in mind as “the nation of elbow grease”, we assume that he’s alluding to financial inequalities and the exploitation of laborers.
He goes on to use the terms “goody two-shoes” and “red herrings”, implying that much of current life is defined by performance and distraction. As the piece progresses, the instrumentation grows louder and noisier, sounding like wires shorting out, buildings collapsing, and rubble being bulldozed. The overall effect merges tedium and apocalypse into an amalgam of cosmic drama and earthly boredom.
“Placeholder” strives to make apathy, or even resignation, cool. Gilla Band’s cacophonous yet driving rhythms and Kiely’s slapstick self-portraiture (“I’m very shy / I’m that kind of guy / I’m a little bipolar”) bring to mind Model-Actriz’s 2023 debut, Dogsbody. While Dogsbody, however, draws sultrily from the New York dance/club scene and focuses on issues related to sexuality and queer identity, Gilla Band, here and elsewhere, are more straightforwardly abrasive. They’re also less classically romantic, with Kiely often occurring as asexual and anhedonic.
“Alogia” (a condition which makes it hard to speak fluently) seems like an apt title for a Gilla Band tune. A funky yet clangorous soundscape unfurls as Kiely again launches into self-portraiture/self-parody: “Fantasize what it’s like to be accountants / A steady structure, routine and purpose / That kind of life would be so perfect / Especially ’cos I’m a schizophrenic.”
These lines don’t lament the tension between misanthropy and loneliness à la Mandy, Indiana or serve as a rant regarding the heartbreaking aspects of mental illness, as one might encounter courtesy of Chat Pile. Instead, the passage, with its sardonic deflections and mercurial nonchalance, casts Kiely as a 21st-century “unreliable narrator”. The band’s harsh and jarring music complements Kiely’s sarcastic tone, highlighting a sense of instability.
At times, Gilla Band can sound futuristic, as if they’re enacting an AI caricature of themselves. “Jacobsons” unfolds as a meta-mix, sounding like data sonifications and off-the-wall Zen mantras shoved through an exaggeration blender. One can imagine Arthur Fleck dancing jerkily while waving a knife over his head. “The Megazord” similarly interweaves quirky accents with monstrous moans and Faulkner’s oddly buoyant percussion. Is this the audial analog to a house of mirrors? In “Computer Sadness”, meanwhile, weighty and distorted rhythms are crossed with ambient vocal parts that conjure angry crowd chants. Has the band descended into the pits of trauma during an ayahuasca ceremony?
With “Giraffe”, the group are at their eeriest. A noise-sprawl and metronomic beat undergird Kiely as he tosses Twilight Zone/Black Mirror-esque reflections: “Yesterday the world fell asleep without me”, “The creature in your pupils / Teaching you shit skills … teaching you shit.” As the track progresses, the mix grows more anarchic and urgent. Kieley adopts various voices, perhaps mimicking an MC, someone on the verge of breakdown, and an academic who specializes in Instagram trends. The track epitomizes Pugnello‘s integration of the satirical and tragic, the authentic and melodramatic.
Gilla Band eloquently address much of the 2026 zeitgeist. We’re more outspoken, apathetic, self-glorifying, and self-loathing than ever. We leap between grandiosity and despair. God forbid we should be bored or have our cravings thwarted. Additionally, due in part to polarizations and the “flattening” nature of social media, subjectivity has finally and predictably eclipsed objectivity. Regardless of one’s political or sociocultural tilts, we’ve all internalized the notion of “alternate facts”: science is great until it contradicts our beliefs.
Hence, we live in private, invitation-only realities. We dispatch our truths into outer space via filtered platforms. A few people will always be able to relate. With Pugnello, Gilla Band emerge as spokespersons for our age of solipsism, dissecting and lampooning these proclivities, suggesting that if we can’t laugh at ourselves, we’re doomed for sure.