For Dublin’s folk-doom outfit Lankum, traditional Irish music sessions are the antidote to the loneliness of the modern world. In conversation with SHANE ANDERSON, band members Cormac MacDiarmada and Ian Lynch discuss transforming ancient folk songs into haunting, contemporary ballads.
By Shane Anderson
Though just banter between songs, the interaction serves as a synecdoche for the band at large: Taking traditional ballads that occasionally date back centuries, Lankum creates pieces that explore the darkness of the human experience and go against the standard narrative of Irish music, where it’s just about getting drunk and having a good “craic.” At times, the band’s sound is as heavy as a funeral procession and at others it is possessed by a raw, primal energy—thanks, in part, to the Lynch brothers’ background in the European crust punk scene. And although they’ve traded in their electric guitars for traditional instruments, such as Uillean pipes, tin whistle, fiddle, and harmonium, the band nevertheless upends tradition, stripping down the ancient folk songs and rebuilding them with haunting harmonies and dense droning soundscapes that are sweeping festivals and stages across the world, earning them the Guardian’s 2023 best album accolades for their album False Lankum (2023). In this interview with Shane Anderson, band members Cormac MacDiarmada and Ian Lynch explain why traditional Irish music sessions are the antidote to the loneliness of the modern world.
SHANE ANDERSON: The band name used to be Lynched, which was in reference to the last name of two members in your band, but you changed it because you felt it might be offensive to some listeners. Why did you choose the name Lankum?
CORMAC MACDIARMADA: We were on tour in Europe when we landed on Lankum after talking about the name change for a good couple of years. There were hundreds of hundreds of names suggested but Lankum was the one we all agreed on.
IAN LYNCH: We were very fond of a certain recording of a ballad called “False Lankum.” The recording was made by a Traveler singer called John Reilly Jr. in the 1960s in Ireland. He sang this very elaborate, lengthy ballad and the villain of the piece is called False Lankum. It’s kind of like the bogeyman in the story and it goes to a castle to murder everyone, including the children. It turns out that the False Lankum is the one who built the castle and was never paid for his hard work.
SA: So, the song has a very political dimension to it. And it seems to me this could be said of a lot of your work.
IL: It’s just something there in the music. Folk and traditional music is the music of the people.
SA: How do you find the songs you record?
CM: There are loads of different ways. The one thing about music like this is that it’s very much a living tradition, it’s very much in a constant flow. What I mean is it’s not a relic. It’s thriving. It’s very social and vibrant. It’s in the pubs we would have gone to, all the singers circles in and around Dublin as well as in other parts of the country. In the olden days, we would go and play a session, an informal gathering of musicians, after a gig.
SA: Your sound has changed a lot over the past ten years. What brought about this change?
CM: One of the key things with the last two albums in particular was getting our producer, John “Spud” Murphy, who plays with us now, too. He was on the Dublin Irish scene for a long time and recorded a lot of amazing records. And he brought a different energy that hugely boosts our sound. When we are recording something and are making arrangements now, we’re like, “OK, this is really good, but it’s going to be absolutely stratospheric once he gets his hands on it.”
IL: I think trying to constantly evolve that element of the band’s sound that is darkly meditative is what drives us. But I do think there were certain things we were trying to do previously that were in this direction. Even tracks on Cold Old Fire, say, the middle segment of “Tri-Coloured House,” or, later on, the drone underpinning “Déanta in Éireann” or “What Will We Do When We Have No Money?” We were trying to delve more into doom and drone there and do it with our traditional instruments, but we hit a brick wall before we met “Spud” since these instruments are used in a very specific way.
SA: Another part of your process that interests me is that you decided to record a little-known version of “Wild Rover.” It’s very different than The Dubliner’s version, which feels like Ireland’s second national anthem. Could you talk about that choice and deciding to go against the grain?
CM: When we found that song, it was a bit of a revelation. We were all like, “fucking hell, this is unbelievable.” And that’s half the battle. Once you find one of those songs, it creates a collective energy and drive.
IL: I think it’s safe to say that a lot of people are very sick of that standard version of “Wild Rover.” And so, it’s really nice to bring a different version of the song and use that as an example to say, “Look, a lot of these big traditional songs used to exist in so many different variations around the world. This is only one version and there’s a lot more out there, you just have to dig deeper.” I made a podcast episode about “Wild Rover,” and there are hundreds of versions of that song that exist all around the world. But because of the nature of the recording industry in the 20th century and the nature of mainstream music, when one song is recorded and becomes a hit, it halts this very natural process of variation and evolution that happens to traditional songs when they’re allowed to just exist in their own way in the world. The way that traditional songs change and vary and evolve and travel around the world is important to talk about.
SA: So, it’s about offering a counter-narrative to the boisterous drinking song that is well known?
CM: 100 percent. And you know, the lyrics are fucking depressing. They’re about someone descending into alcoholism and having a huge degree of regret. And that’s not to say that there isn’t a place to have the contrast between the darkest, saddest lyrics with a quite upbeat and merry tune, like in the American Old Time tradition, but we wanted to recontextualize something that is very much a mainstay of the tradition and is done quite a lot and give it a different energy.
SA: What was the reaction like?
IL: I think a lot of people were like, “Holy shit, I’ve heard that song so much throughout my life and I never even realized that it was a song about a person whose life has been ruined by alcoholism and now they have all this regret of a life that’s spent away, and they wish it had been different.” I think people found that really refreshing. I don’t think it would have been the same if we had recorded the “Wild Rover” that everybody knows. The way Irish music has been packaged and sold by the industry is a very one-sided view. It’s all very happy go lucky. We’re all drunk and having a good time. And when we do that, it sounds like this.
As far as we’re concerned, that’s not true to the tradition at all. If you’ve spent time investigating traditional music and song, you find that every single aspect of life is described and comes out in the songs. There are all these other emotions that can be expressed by the music as well.
CM: There is a huge variety out there. I live in Sligo, which has a population of 50,000. A couple of musicians I never met before came to a session that we play regularly and I didn’t know a single tune they played. It’s probably indicative of how huge amount out there and how the repertoire changes from county to county.
