There has been a considerable level of cultish hype surrounding Pillow Queens since the Irish quartet debuted their Calm Girls EP in 2017. Three years later, they are finally ready to unveil their debut album.

In Waiting, it turns out, is a barefaced rejection of the various labels critics have attempted to pin on the group since their inception. It opens in surprisingly gentle fashion with ‘Holy Show’: Pillow Queens clearly aren’t interested in any sonic shock factor, instead relying on their own messaging to define themselves. How they sound is less important here than who they are, and what they’re saying.

The songs find the four-piece taking a microscope to life in Dublin. It is, by turn, critical and reverent. ‘A Dog’s Life’ serves as an allegory for the housing crisis; on raucous guitar workout 'Liffey', Pamela Connolly sings “spread me over the Liffey and send me off to sleep”.

The record is hallmarked by tough, bruising poetry, delivered impeccably as Pillow Queens restlessly bounce from genre to genre, refusing to settle. Lazy comparisons have been made to The Murder Capital and Fontaines D.C., with some early reviewers going as far as to call them a ‘female’ answer to those bands. Not so. Even a cursory listen through In Waiting will shatter those preconceptions. This, rather, is a distinctive, original and quietly brilliant debut.

• 8/10

Listen to In Waiting below.

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