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Sep 23, 2015Girl Band’s latest is a startling upending of any and all expectations you would dare place upon a modern rock group.
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Sep 23, 2015Just musical enough to swallow, and just raucous enough to rattle your bones, Girl Band's Holding Hands with Jamie represents all the harmful and healing qualities of noise. It won't be long until you're hooked.
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Sep 28, 2015It's rare to come across an album that allows you only the faintest impression of its workings while simultaneously impacting you in a profound way.
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Sep 23, 2015With their debut they have, for the most part, broken metaphysical barriers between techno, noise and punk, and presented a record beaming with youthful exuberance, and containing a frightening level of intensity. The presented fruits of their labour, inspired by Kiely’s breakdown, are resounding.
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Dec 17, 2015It’s an album on which struggle is audible.
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Oct 16, 2015The finale isn’t particularly grand, but Holding Hands With Jamie does much to harness the passion of "left of the dial" indie rock while paying attention to now, eschewing accessibility and melody for the sake of finding something aurally distinct.
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Oct 5, 2015Holding Hands with Jaime is a remarkable debut album. It ticks off plenty of familiar noise-rock boxes, but Girl Band massages them into a whole that feels authentically their own.
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MojoOct 1, 2015Girl Band play ugly noise with a charisma and energy to drag them from the no wave ghetto, to somewhere bigger. [Nov 2015, p.89]
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Sep 28, 2015By reinventing the idea of what a guitar-centric band should sound like from the bottom up, Girl Band has established itself as a much-needed force in rock, and Holding Hands With Jamie is among most exhilarating opening salvos of 2015.
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Sep 28, 2015The way the album veers between savage energy blasts and more deliberately paced displays of power is extraordinary.
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Sep 28, 2015These nine songs often build and build only to splutter out in a last, exhausted gasp. And then the next track cranks up and the cycle continues, giving the record a grinding, thwarted sense of frustration.
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Sep 24, 2015Holding Hands with Jamie documents four musicians in flux together, their increasing ability to rely on one another allowing them to bother less with outside expectations. If the album felt too complete, they wouldn’t be taking enough chances.
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Sep 24, 2015Senses pummelled and synapses shredded, Holding Hands With Jamie represents anything but an easy ride. But then reputations aren't earned lightly, and Girl Band have earned theirs as the most excitingly coarse noise rock outfit on the planet through sheer guts and tenacity.
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Sep 23, 2015These are cranky, abstracted journeys through texture, noise and rhythm with howling, gibbering singer Dara Kiely as our unreliable spirit guide. At their best, Girl Band manage to locate a sweet spot between chaos and precision, poise and frenzy, hysteria and logic.
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Oct 5, 2015Traces of Liars’ DNA persist, as do similarities to those tireless Texans Shit and Shine, but it’s hard to think of another guitar-based band conjuring fear this exhilarating and volume this rapturous.
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Oct 6, 2015Hard, fast, and utterly compelling, this is quite unlike any girl band you've ever heard.
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Sep 29, 2015Holding Hands with Jamie deftly maneuvers and manufactures its own sense and nonsense in equal measure.
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Oct 16, 2015Kiely makes for a compelling, at times dryly funny, chronicler of everyday life-hate.
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Sep 25, 2015Reference points include Liars and The Fall, but Girl Band is very much its own beast.
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Q MagazineOct 1, 2015The levity of the words is the perfect counterbalance to the fury of their playing. [Nov 2015, p.110]
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Sep 29, 2015Girl Band possess enormous potential and big, big things look to be lying just around the corner for the Dubliners. Whilst this often only remains as potential for this first step, Holding Hands With Jamie is a refreshing change and welcome one-fingered salute to the mundane and safe rock music of today.
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Sep 25, 2015Holding Hands With Jamie remains an untamed beast that’ll pave the way for Girl Band’s unstoppable ascent. There remains a nagging feeling, however, that this deadly work could’ve forced an apocalypse if delivered with more conviction.
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Sep 24, 2015Girl Band have similarly taken advantage of their expanded recording budget in order to craft their most bracing work yet.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 15 out of 17
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Mixed: 1 out of 17
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Negative: 1 out of 17
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Oct 25, 2019