M(H)AOL - Attachment Styles

The sacred Irish fire keeps burning. Starting with Girl Band (now Gilla Band), over the past decade Dublin has seen a scene that had gone a bit dormant come back to life, and today that same virtuous streak continues with the unveiling of a new project bearing a mysterious name. We're in the territory of a sturdy, dissonant (post)-punk that folds in elements of no-wave, noise and industrial. The ironic feminine edge of Bikini Kill layered over the tribal approach of The Slits, but only after having memorized every lesson taught by Sonic Youth. The real crux lies in the subjects tackled in the lyrics, explicitly centered on queerness, feminism and sexual self-determination, with unfiltered attacks on sexism, misogyny and so-called "rape culture".

In truth, M(h)aol (I'm told it should be pronounced "male") aren't exactly fresh-faced newcomers: active since 2014, they dropped their first single, "Clementine", the following year, then came a stand-by period that stretched on until 2020, when the spark was reignited, leading first to the EP "Gender Studies" and now to the ten politically charged tracks that make up "Attachment Styles", their debut album.

From the opening "Asking For It", their generational anthem recounting the aftermath of sexual violence, "Attachment Styles" has all the hallmarks of something born in New York between the Seventies and Eighties, yet instead it comes from the "green isle" of the new millennium. Raw and direct on the one-two punch of "Bored Of Men"/"No One Ever Talks To Us", M(h)aol proudly flaunt their convictions in the spoken word of "Bisexual Anxiety" - all thoroughly self-explanatory titles.

"Attachment Styles" is a ticking time bomb always on the verge of going off, a therapy session carried out through disturbed songs, sung or declaimed with rage and passion by the voice of Róisín Nic Ghearailt. But now let's unmask the mystery: the band's name is inspired by the legendary 16th-century Irish revolutionary pirate Gráinne Mhaol, who earned herself the nickname "Pirate Queen" and is still regarded as one of the last local leaders to defend the coasts against English dominance, which is why she became a feminist icon. A single released by M(h)aol in 2020, "Laundries", deals with the "Magdalene Laundries", punitive institutions where, until 1996, girls in Ireland deemed "immoral" for behavior that clashed with the prejudices of the time were confined (an estimated more than thirty thousand over a century and a half, though no truly reliable statistics exist).

Part of the proceeds from sales of the single "Asking For It" were donated to Women's Aid Ireland, a charity working to end domestic violence against women and children. It's just the latest socially-minded initiative from M(h)aol, a reminder that music should never be mere escapism.

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19/07/2023