I saw Lankum play a delightful show at Boston’s Club Passim on a chilly Spring evening earlier this year, and then again recently in Fall River.
This new video and the song within is just brilliant. We look forward to the band’s next trip to the States. – THE HOBBLEDEHOY
The chorus of ‘The Young People’ first appeared as a kind of Scottish singalong in Daragh’s head one morning as he woke up, and not sure whether it was a traditional song he’d heard before, a composite of folk songs and melodies from his subconscious, or a completely original piece, he sang it into a dictaphone before it disappeared, like so many before it.
The band originally tried using it as a verse, writing others in the same style, but it didn’t seem to work quite as well as imagined. After sitting down and writing a couple of verses on suicide and loss one day, Daragh found that it fit perfectly as the chorus, providing some light to the darkness and adding a satisfying minor to major lift.
The resulting song, although quite mournful at times, is ultimately a reminder to cherish and appreciate your friends and loved ones while you still can.
“It is set over an autumn morning in Dublin, with all the action happening in the same little sliver of time. The idea was inspired by the lyricism of the first verse, especially the line ‘his feet were ringing a bell’. I found myself thinking about the starkness of that image, but then also considering what sort of actions other people’s feet might be doing at the same time to contrast that. I was interested in the idea of doing a video with a street photography approach, shooting it in a simple documentary-style, and concentrating on just feet and legs, set against the textures of the city. I spent a lot of time travelling through Dublin with my eyes on the ground, watching and waiting for interesting moments to happen. The way people move through or occupy city spaces, even in the most routine ways, form a sort of interconnected ephemeral dance. You start to see that there’s something very expressive about feet that makes them easy to empathise with. You somehow see more of a person by seeing less of them in the frame” [ Source: Nialler9.com ]
