M(h)aol - Attachment Styles (TULLE 
Collective)
Release Date: Out now
Irish collective M(h)aol were one of my favourite finds of 2022 so I'm delighted to be sharing their debut album with you but it comes with a warning - this is powerful and emotive stuff so strap yourself for the ride and enjoy it. 'Attachment Styles' is ten tracks of raw, lo-fi but hi-emotion songwriting which pulls no punches and focuses on the topics that matter without pandering to anyone or anything. The album opens with 'Asking For It' which faces up to the idea that women are, in some way, putting themselves in the way of rape or sexual abuse, all set to a pumping bass line, itchy beats and guitars that are more molested than they are played.
'Bored Of Men' rattles in with a thunderously raw beat and a dead-eyed vocal performance which is part the Fall, part Sleater Kinny, part L7 and part Sleaford Mods all mixed together in a rusty blender and washed down with some TCP. On 'Noone Ever Talks To Us', the guitars buzz and grind in to life while a simple drums'n'bass combo gives the track some motion before the brilliantly disorientating crescendo blows your head off. The spoken word diary of 'Bisexual Anxiety' is a superbly honest account of what it is like to be bisexual and the questions that fly around just being who you are set to some atmospheric but uncomfortable guitar sounds. Fittingly, 'Therapy' follows on next and it sounds like a very early U2 track but only if a young Bjork had grown up in Dublin and kicked Bono out of the band for being pretentious.
At over five minutes long, 'Nice Guys' is a rock opera compared to most of the rest of the album and that fits with the structure of the song too as it goes through various moods and movements albeit with a rustily mechanic energy. By contrast, the 42 seconds of 'Kim is a Punk Type Dog' is a child-like jam of fuzzed up guitars, playful vocals and simplistic drumming. I feel like 'Cowboy Honey' would be a great band name but for now it's a moody bass drone and clattering beat of a song that seems to run out of steam towards the end but they leave the tape running and a ghost comes in an dabbles on the piano strings for the last minute.
Penultimate track 'Femme' has a raw, driving punk sound that you can imagine hearing coming out of a garage in downtown LA getting louder and more intense as you approach, drawn in like a sailor to the rocks the sirens sit upon. Closing out with 'Period Sex', M(h)aol have saved their most ambitious track for last as the seven and a half minute song moves slowly through the stages from sultry art rock groove to breathy Breeders-esque climax before that ghost comes back in to the studio again. M(h)aol are uncompromising, unrelenting and unique which will chime with a lot of people but will put a lot of people off too and that's why I love them. Making music as an art form and to get a message across - not to shift units above all else.
More information: https://www.facebook.com/mhaol
Live Dates:
19th May - Wandering Oak @ Bobiks, Newcastle Upon Tyne
22nd May - Brudenell @ Hyde Park Book Club, Leeds w/
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