SILVERBACKS & The Personal Vanity Project

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"the group expertly dive into different genres with whipsmart lyrics that pack an instant punch" DIY

"infectious hooks and addicting guitarwork" Stereogum

"wiry punk" The FADER

"bringing slick 00’s indie to the bleakness of the now" NME

Dublin 6-piece Silverbacks return with new single ‘Selling Shovels’, recorded with Gilla Band’s Daniel Fox. It’s their first release since 2022 sophomore effort Archive Material (Full Time Hobby).

Scrappy guitar harmonics usher in a rolling slice of wonky guitar pop, atop which vocalist Daniel O’Kelly’s delivers a staccato admission to a natural impatience / morbid curiosity.

As he explains: "The idea for these lyrics came from a habit I have - maybe everyone does it? When reading a historical figure’s wikipedia page I often lose interest and so I jump straight to the ‘personal life’ and ‘death’ part of the page to see how they died and the circumstances they were in at the time. The lyrics flicker between mundane distractions and fairly horrific images of war. Selling Shovels is a reference to ‘selling shovels during the gold rush’."

This desire to head straight to the meaty bits echoes Silverbacks’ lean approach to slacker indebted art-rock; a startling dexterity allows the sextet to traverse styles without wasting a note.

Updating the 90s/00s sound of Pavement, Guided By Voices, Yo La Tengo and Yeah Yeah Yeahs and instilling it with a very particular brand of 2020’s angst, Silverbacks punctuate tongue-in-cheek moments and surreal lyrics with sudden lucid points.

Across two acclaimed releases - 2020 debut Fad and 2022 follow-up Archive Material the band have picked up a slew of champions across press and radio. A transatlantic appeal has seen this bear out across the Irish, UK, and North American landscapes (Stereogum, PASTE, Brooklyn Vegan; The Sunday Times, The Quietus, NME, 6 Music).

With ‘Selling Shovels’ Silverbacks continue on the course set out by their two albums to date. However, with some distance now from the pandemic which these records sandwiched - and had an unintentional and unfortunate formative effect - the band have clearer air, and a lighter touch, born of a combination of musical and personal settling down.

‘Selling Shovels’ - the new single from Silverbacks - is out now via Central Tones / Cargo.

Silverbacks are Daniel O'Kelly (Vocals/Guitar), Kilian O'Kelly (Guitar/Vocals), Emma Hanlon (Vocals/Bass), Paul Leamy (Bass), Peadar Kearney (Guitar) and Gary Wickham (Drums).