Gilla Band songs are claustrophobic rooms with a door to enter and no way out: tense scenarios seen through the eyes of someone with suffocating anxiety and paranoia. On “Post Ryan,” the closing track from the band’s forthcoming album Most Normal, the Irish noise rockers deliver one of their most unnervingly even-keeled examples to date. Centered around a warped interpolation of the beat from Flock of Seagulls’ hit “I Ran (So Far Away),” “Post Ryan” is a soliloquy run amok. As if scrambling to ground himself, vocalist Dara Kiely describes things he sees—a balding barber, a snail’s crushed shell—before caving to “inevitable depression.” “I’m in between breakdowns/Constantly in recovery/I’m just the same prick,” he deadpans. “Gonna end up homeless/I hid behind the surreal.” The self-exposure is so raw that Kiely had to step away when he initially played the vocal demo for his bandmates.
But instead of leaving Kiely to squirm in the spotlight, the rest of Gilla Band amplify his mental spiral: a droning bassline rises and falls like a sine wave, mimicking the queasy motion of a Music Express carnival ride; guitar wails oscillate through space, giving the illusion of something sharp and tinny narrowly missing your head; the bouncy pop drumbeat devolves in tone and volume, like it’s one loose screw away from collapse. As the song swells with noisy dissonance, Kiely starts berating himself. “Inevitable depression when I do nothing,” he sings repeatedly. You can practically hear his head spinning. Suddenly, “Post Ryan” comes to an abrupt end. It’s time to get off the ride, the acidic taste of bile tingling at the back of your throat.
Content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
