REVIEW: Gurriers – Come and See

I’m not claiming that the recent resurgence in Irish guitar music started with Fontaines DC’s Dogrel, but I do think that would be a fair assessment. It seems like ever since that album was released, a raft of punky, shouty, aggressive bands with influences from the punk and post-punk of previous eras, have been arriving at an almost relentless rate. While those bands have continued to emerge, the band that may have started it all have been growing and evolving, gradually leaving the raw, nasty sound of Dogrel behind them. To their credit, this move has seen them grow towards a level of popularity that nobody who heard ‘Boys In The Better Land’ would have predicted. But there will be people who, in the wake of Romance, are missing that early sound.

If that’s a hole that needs filling for you, then say hello to Gurriers. I need more time with Come and See before I can confidently say where it fits among great albums from the likes of Fontaines DC, Sprints, The Murder Capital, and Just Mustard, but in terms of the blistering power of Dogrel – Come and See is the first thing to surpass it. The album starts with a headsplitting trio of songs in ‘Nausea’, ‘Des Goblin’, and ‘Dipping Out.’ But while these are all loud and angry sounding songs, they all represent an admirable level of musical ability too. The way the bass, guitars, and drums interact brings Joy Division to mind.

It would be an exaggeration to say that this album is ever slow or quiet, but they do tone down the velocity on the magnificent ‘Prayers’. This song shows that they do have some variation to their sound, too, as the delivery is much closer to spoken word than the screaming we have experienced so far. The foghorn grind of the guitars and the rumbling drums of ‘Close Call’ put us firmly back behind an enthralling wall of noise, and ‘No More Photos’ continues the feeling that you are meeting some sort of relentless force. So when the gentle, yet slightly eerie, ‘Interlude’ comes in, it’s almost as if the band are saying ‘okay, we know we’ve been battering you round the head for a while here, have a little break why don’t you?’

And then ‘Top Of The Bill’ continues that easing off, giving the listener a chance to reset before a rip-roaring finale. ‘Sign of the Times’ is the purest punk track on offer, ‘Approachable’ is a mosh-worthy monster of a song, and then we close with something approaching shoegaze in the form of the title song.

With that closing track, Gurriers show that they might have a mix of all the best parts of the bands I mentioned earlier in this review. They are the least polished of them all, and therefore come across as the most authentic. It feels like, with the resurgence now in full force for a few years, Gurriers come at a time when they can be influenced by their current compatriots at the same time as they take from the bands that made this sort of music huge in the first place. But as much as influences are clear, they are a unique and exciting band in their own right. And I certainly don’t mean to make these comparisons come off as some kind of competition among the bands – more just that Gurriers are a further example of a flourishing music scene that I feel lucky to be listening to.

Words by Fran Slater