Lankum review – eerie, overwhelming radical Irish folk already feels centuries old

The Mercury-nominated four-piece play every song as if they’re fighting with it, gasping for air before verses

By Katie Hawthorne

A menacing rumble fills the Queen’s Hall. Four empty chairs line the front of the stage, crowded by instruments: fiddles, guitars, hand organs, pipes, pedals, a harmonium. Slowly, the rumble builds into a fidgety clatter, as if a ghostly orchestra is preparing to play, and Lankum walk on stage, their first notes bleeding into the din.

Such eerie theatre is a fitting introduction to the Dublin folk band, who turn traditional songs into fresh horrors and write stormy, gothic elegies to modern life which already feel centuries old. Their latest album, the Mercury prize-nominated False Lankum, is bound together by similarly haunted atmospherics, and yet it still feels a surprise when the band – Radie Peat, Cormac Mac Diarmada and brothers Ian and Daragh Lynch – pull their first song proper out of this mist.

They have a ferocious physicality to their musicianship, and although Daragh describes new (old) song The New York Trader as a “workout, every time”, just moments later he is hunched over his guitar with a violin bow, sawing as if cutting a thick rope. The Rocky Road to Dublin is sung with such intensity that the band collectively gasps for air before each verse, both meditative and ominous. The weather worsens further for The Pride of Petravore: pipes roar and Mac Diarmada’s fiddle turns into a horrifying groan.

Then, as if the evening has been breezy entertainment until now, Peat offers a blunt warning: “We wrote this one during level-five lockdown. Probably why it’s so intense.” Go Dig My Grave is the showstopper of False Lankum, a bone-crunchingly heavy ballad about love and death. Peat’s astonishing voice cuts through the dark, and the song builds around her: four-piece harmonies, guitar strummed like a funeral march, and a doom-laden siren with the circular swing of a lighthouse’s beam.

“We always sing, even when we’re losing,” goes their first single Cold Old Fire. This mix of grief and joy is why some songs live so long, and to close the night Lankum offers the latter: a rowdy version of Bear Creek has the audience whooping and stamping in cleansing release.

Source: Lankum review – eerie, overwhelming radical Irish folk already feels centuries old

Bridget St John (Live) French Television 1970

By Johnny Foreigner

Here in the colonies, Bridget St John remains one of the more under-appreciated artists in the British Folk genre. Her voice is not as sweet as Sandy Denny’s, nor possessing the huskiness of latter-day Marianne Faithful, but combines a small scoop of each with a delicious melted Nico topping.
In England during the 1970s, she worked with Kevin Ayers, John Martyn and Mike Oldfield. Her first album, Ask Me No Questions was released in 1969, and during the early seventies, she shared Folk charts and BBC radio time with Sandy Denny, Nick Drake, Cat Stevens and Fairport Convention.

Born in Surrey, England, she lived periodically in London, Aix-en-Provence, France, eventually landing in Greenwich Village, New York, only to decide to take the next 20 years off from performing.

This small concert made for French television in 1970 is quite wonderful. Listen, and appreciate Bridget’s je ne sais quoi.

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How Scotland’s music scene is surviving COVID-19

A look at the Scottish music scene’s coronavirus response, with Honeyblood’s Stina Tweeddale, Sneaky Pete’s owner Nick Stewart and SMIA’s Robert Kilpatrick

A feeling a lot like Doomsday fell about town last weekend. Up until then it had felt like business as usual, but while Boris Johnson told the public that schools would stay open and sporting events could go ahead, Nicola Sturgeon seemed to confirm on Thursday afternoon what Scottish promoters had feared for weeks – that large gatherings of more than 500 people would be banned in Scotland, starting Monday.

Events that were scheduled that weekend could still go ahead, and at Wee Dub Festival the room was full. That’s not to say there weren’t lingering signs of the coronavirus pandemic – events colleagues opted for the more hygienic elbow bump over hugs, and MC Natty Campbell shared on the mic how nervewracking passing through Edinburgh Airport had been. “It’s scary out there,” he said, “but tonight is about the music.”

“The show must go on” seems to be the operating mantra amongst promoters, though with each passing day that is becoming an ever more daunting task. In Edinburgh, the lack of large venues initially felt like a benefit. Smaller clubs, like the 100-capacity Sneaky Pete’s, could technically still keep their doors open, while nights like Church Edinburgh said that they would cap numbers for their night in the Liquid Rooms (now cancelled) to stay under the 500 limit.

But come Monday, it materialised that Sturgeon’s message was not an outright ban, just strongly-worded advice. In his first daily briefing to the public, Johnson avoided ordering a ban, in favour of discouraging people from communing in clubs, pubs and restaurants, and said that emergency services would no longer be in attendance at large gatherings. It is left to the musicians, promoters, and venues, then, to decide whether to press forward with their events.

Whether these individuals ethically feel that they can keep bringing people together is one thing. On Saturday, EH-FM resident DJ Andrea Montalto announced that a night he was supposed to play in The Jago in Dalston was cancelled. “Due to the lack of measures taken by the British government it’s very important to take responsibility and act in any way to protect the weakest,” he wrote on his Facebook page. “What is happening at the moment in Italy is a warning that we can’t avoid looking at.”

‘Closing venues for a few weeks could be a disaster’

But many who have staked their careers on live music have little other choice. A lot of these events are built by an army of freelancers, who must all now rely on the generosity of their clients to pay for work that might not go ahead. This line of work is already famously hand-to-mouth, and with a rapidly emptying calendar many have found themselves cut off.

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