There is a diversity to Silverbacks that is evident not only in their releasing three albums in four years but also in the way they have used their influences to broaden their creative reach. Their 2020 debut, Fad, and its 2022 follow-up, Archive Material, showcased a band eager to share their admiration for the no-wave/new-wave music of the late-1970s and early-1980s. Easy Being a Winner continues this love affair but with no sense of complacency or sluggish repetition.

If the first two albums suggest a band sometimes usefully in thrall to the likes of Television, Talking Heads and The Fall, Easy Being a Winner takes things more in its stride. Over the past year or so lead singer and guitarist Daniel O’Kelly moved to the outskirts of Paris, while their vocalist Emma Hanlon and guitarist Kilian O’Kelly – Daniel’s brother – moved to Drogheda, Co Louth. Additionally, a new band member, the bass player Paul Leamy, has slotted seamlessly into position, and in doing so has removed pressures of time and expectations. Ironically, taking their collective foot off the pedal has motivated the musicians to write deeper, better songs.

You can hear that from the opening track, Selling Shovels, which deftly fuses Thin Lizzy’s twin/triple guitar attacks (or “guitarmony”, as Silverbacks describe it) with staccato blasts of taut grooves that wouldn’t sound out of place in NYC’s Knitting Factory venue circa 1978. Flex is another treat, a rippling folk song with spikes driven through it, while the bittersweet Songs About Divide references Young Marble Giants with sparse, breezy melancholia. Best of all is No Rivers Around Here, in which Daniel O’Kelly writes about living in a neighbourhood a few kilometres from the middle of Paris. The song’s Stereolab-like motorik beat and Television-esque guitar lines amalgamate in a way that makes you wish it was much more 3½ minutes long.

You can hear the new music at launch gigs on Saturday, October 19th (Workman’s Club, Dublin), and Sunday, October 20th (Coughlan’s, Cork).