Lankum
Royal Hospital Kilmainham, Dublin
★★★★★
There’s something wonderfully far-fetched about the rise of Lankum. The Dublin band inhabit an eerie hinterland between 19th-century Irish folk and experimental drone music. Neither are exactly blockbuster genres. And yet here they were on Saturday, headlining their own festival on the heels of a Mercury Prize nomination for their fourth critically lauded fourth album, False Lankum.
It’s an inspiring story, and the quartet of Ian and Daragh Lynch, Radie Peat and Cormac MacDiarmada seem moved by the warm reception they receive as the sun sets and a chill creeps over Kilmainham. Announcing they have a dislike for playing festivals – they’ve just come from Primavera in Barcelona, where they shared the bill with Lana Del Rey and SZA – they add that they are delighted to make an exception for In The Meadows, where the line-up, hand-picked by Lankum, includes Dublin singer John Francis Flynn and indie veterans Mogwai.
Yet for all Lankum’s protestations to the contrary, the sweep and scale of an outdoor stage is a perfect fit for their “mutant folk”. They’re straight into the heavy stuff with the throbbing Go Dig My Grave – a cousin once removed to the 17th-century murder ballad, Barbara Allen, as covered by Joan Baez, Bob Dylan and Art Garfunkel (and, in a 1951 Warner Brothers cartoon, Porky Pig).
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It is vast and primordial – a Godzilla-sized dirge that spotlights Peat’s keening vocals and the roiling air of disquiet summoned by the rhythm section. Even in the crisp outdoors of Dublin in June, it carries a claustrophobic punch. When the last creaking note falls still, you are surprised to realise you’ve been holding your breath.
Lankum can evoke beauty as effortlessly as they summon dread. Graceful and poignant, Clear Away In The Morning has a stadium rock grandeur – it sounds like Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here injected with Brendan Behan’s DNA.
There is some politics, too. A Palestine flag occupies a prominent place on stage while Ian Lynch, by way of introducing The New York Trader – about a man who keeps company with murderers – hits out at the “Zionists in Brussels”.
Lynch is passionate but an expert banterer, too. Before playing the Rocky Road To Dublin, the 19th-century jig by poet DK Gavan, he says the tune is about the “things that define” Ireland as a nation: “[a] bit of drinking, bit of rioting, walking around on lots of s*** roads and fighting the Brits, because, guess, what colonisation is a load of s***”.
There is also an ongoing gag involving Lynch pronouncing Dublin in a mid-Atlantic accent (“Dublinnnn”). “Dublinnn ... best city in the goddamn world”. His brother, Daragh, jumps in with the rejoinder, “Okay, Bono”, and Lynch runs with it, adding in a “West Brit” reference in relation to the U2 frontman for good measure.
There are some guest appearances (no, not Bono). Lankum’s producer John “Spud” Murphy is present throughout, and West Kerry musician Cormac Begley joins for Master Crowley’s, which starts as an old-timey stomp before mutating into an amorphous onslaught of discordant notes and pulsating lighting.
The effect is thrillingly unsettling. Lankum conjure a sense of ancient foreboding all over again during the encore with an intense run at ballad, The Wild Rover. The old drinking song is reformatted as a tempestuous lament, with Lankum framed by dry ice and throbbing strobes. They are pipers at gates of hell, and this is, from beginning to end, is a devilishly gripping concert.
