September Girls – Cursing the Sea – Album Review

By No More Workhorse on March 3, 2014 • ( Leave a comment )

‘September Girls are a five piece garagepop band from Dublin, Ireland’ or so their Wikipedia page says. This came as quite a surprise to me, when I saw them at last years YouBloom festival. The festival is a mix of local emerging artists and more established groups to draw in the punters. Often the best bands were the international acts. I saw the September Girls play the Workman’s Club, and was instantly impressed, but then to discover they were a local group? I instantly sat up and took notice.

It’s no surprise that their first album ‘Cursing the Sea’ is starting to make waves (sorry, couldn’t resist). They’re the type of band and sound that could make a real impression on the indie album charts. The band look great and their sound is indie bliss, a wall of guitar noise greets you with their lilting voices lost in amongst the general madness. They are reminiscent of a number of bands from the early 90’s, with Ride, Swervedriver and Lush coming to mind. I’ve often thought the shoegaze sound is something that disappeared over the last few years, so it’s good to see it re-emerge!

There are heavy distorted guitar, strong organ sounds, pounding drums and wafting vocals (you have to strain to work out the lyrics!). There’s a consistency of sound among the 11 tracks that make it feel like a body of work. They’re a band that are out on their own, making a sound that is not trendy at the moment, but is quite lovely! Hopefully this is the first of many albums from this Irish quintet.

Check out the September Girls on Facebook here.

Cursing at the Sea was released in January, from Fortuna Pop.