Gig Review: Gilla Band At The White Hotel
Gilla Band put The White Hotel’s structural integrity to the test with a set as precisely controlled as it is deafening.
There is a brief moment when the sound completely stops; the floor ceases to vibrate and whoever conducted The White Hotel’s risk assessment breathes a sigh of relief. Gilla Band are loud. Their songs detonate. A deceptively minimal setup, one drum kit, one bass guitar, one electric guitar and a voice, comes with a notice of destruction attached. There are several moments when it feels like The White Hotel’s metal shutters will be blown off.
It is the first show that Gilla Band have played since their new album, Pugnello, dropped to rapturous reviews. The songs from that record, which make up most of tonight’s setlist, are delivered as masterfully as the band’s earliest and most road-tested songs. There is an unrelenting energy that pulses through a compulsive and violent set. You are pulled towards the stage with one strong arm and punched in the face with the other.
Pugnello’s release has been aided by a recent Pitchfork feature that offers an understanding of Gilla Band’s singularity that had previously been hard to pin down. Noise punk, post-punk and noise rock all fit in certain ways, but it is perhaps best to understand them as your favourite band’s favourite band. It is easy to see why they appeal to other musicians when you experience the band’s command of sound. Adam Faulkner’s drumming is propulsive, technical and relentless. Daniel Fox’s booming basslines compete with a throbbing red strobe light to make the gig feel like a rave on a construction site. Alan Duggan Borges contorts and mangles each guitar note through effects pedals and is perhaps most responsible for the volume, while Dara Kiely spins bizarre whirlpools of pop culture references, subtly hilarious gags and razor-sharp honesty.
There is so much noise, but all of it is exact and deliberate. Each part is necessary, and it is hard to imagine it working if any of it was lost or dialled down even slightly. It is not noise just for the sake of it; there is no incidental output, even in the wildness of ‘Crisp Pop’ giving way to ‘Jacobsons’ via carnival drums, sheets of distortion and a rapid spoken-word monologue. Everything has a place and purpose. Even the feedback on songs like ‘Shoulder Blades’ is intentional.
The brief moment of quiet is jarring when it comes. It is shattered when someone shouts, ‘Best band since The Fall.’ Words almost fail Kiely for once as he chews over what he might say, before simply responding, ‘I don’t know how to react to that.’ Then he faces the rest of the band and nods in the pulsing bassline of ‘Placeholder’, which acts as a lasso, tugging everyone’s shoulders forwards. Rocking their upper bodies is about all the people on the ground, stairs and boxes at the back can manage. The venue is too tightly packed to move in any other way.
The White Hotel has earned a reputation as a vibrant hub of underground culture. There is a great charm in its compact weirdness, not least when a band like Gilla Band appear intent on testing its very structure. The venue holds, but it is surely one of the last times a room of this size can be expected to contain the force of Gilla Band.