Seven years after their exciting, abrasive debut single Clementine, Irish post-punks M(h)aol (pronounced male) have finally released their debut album, Attachment Styles. It’s a series of fearless moments that centre on intersectional feminism and reclamation of power, underpinned by a soundtrack of clattering drums and jagged, dissonant guitars.
The result is a record that is equally vulnerable, triumphant and cathartic. “I’m just the dumb bitch that left the party with you,” vocalist Róisín Nic Ghearailt sing-speaks on spicky opener Asking for It, which unflinchingly tackles rape culture. As the track builds, the guitars become thick and gluey and Ghearailt’s voice rises to a roar: “My whole life won’t be defined by you.”
It’s the heaviest track on an album where most of the songs build from bare bones, the instrumentation disjointed and primal, allowing a message of self-acceptance to dominate. Bisexual Anxiety and Femme push back against “the black and white space of monosexuality” – you can hear Ghearailt’s eyes rolling as she sings: “I should have cut my hair off when I knew I was queer / It would have made it easier on everyone here.” Closing track Period Sex provides a lusty, heavy-breathing highlight, Ghearailt savouring the refrain of “I want to make a mess” with coquettish, gleeful defiance as a kaleidoscopic guitar ebbs and flows. It’s a brilliantly confrontational ending – “If this song makes you uncomfortable you should ask yourself, why?” the band ask at the start of the song’s video – to an album that makes good on all the skill and fiery wit that M(h)aol first hinted at seven years prior.
