Rambling through my Soundcloud feed on a slow Monday, and I stumbled once again on the Belfast trio Girls Names. The group is readying their Stains on Silence LP for release on June 15th via the UK label Tough Love Records. The follow-up to the band’s 2015 album Arms Around A Vision, it seems that this upcoming long-player was not without trial and tribulation. After parting ways with their drummer Gib Cassidy in 2016, and with a “finished and then aborted” mix of a next album shelved, Girls Names’ frontman Cathal Cully reveals the band was forced to take a break from music and return to their full-time jobs.
But, after this brief hiatus, the group began work again on the album in earnest. Speaking with The Quietus this past March, Cully explained:
“We started tearing the material apart and rebuilding, re-editing and re-recording different parts in my home in early Autumn last year.”
With this re-vamped perspective on the material in tow, Girls Names returned to Start Together Studio and began finalizing the album’s mixes with producer/engineer Ben McAuley.
“The Impaled Mystique” is our second listen in on the upcoming LP, and it follows the March release of the trio’s single “25.” On the new cut, Claire Miskimmin‘s brooding basslines meet plangent keys in an opening that comes on like a sunburst on a cloudy day. Cathal Cully’s low-register vocals ache like a blue bruise as they swirl in reverb and ghostly echo before the track’s coda finds Philip Quinn‘s chiming guitar lines circling in an undertow of bass and off-kilter piano chords.
Girls Names will embark on a brief European tour this June. You can find a list of their upcoming tour dates after the Soundcloud embed below…
Girls Names Live 2018:
June 15th Blackbox, Belfast
June 19th Moth Club, London
June 20th Oporto, Leeds
June 21st Old Hairdressers, Glasgow
June 22nd Night People, Manchester
June 23rd Whelans, Dublin
August 9-12th Ypsigrock, Sicily
