Lankum – False Lankum (Rough Trade, 2023)

There are few occasions where you start listening to one album casually and, even if you’ll need to deepen it with more attendances, you know you are dealing with some important music. This happened to me almost at the beginning of this year with Algiers’ Shook. But this happened to me to some extent with e more intensity with False Lankum. The Dublin’s collective has an intriguing story on its own, so it’s better to start with some background in order to have a wider context.

Brothers Ian (vocals, Hammer Dulcimer, hurdygurdy, Uillean pipes, concertina, piano, electronics, noise, loop) and Daragh Lynch (vocals, Hammer Dulcimer, piano, organ) gave life to the a band called Lynched self producing three albums variously described as alternative rock, indie rock, and/or influenced by the blues, even if their first output, Where Did It All Go Wrong (Cd Baby, 2013) was in fact a mix of influeces taken from krautrock, punk, drone music and psychedelia mostly.

Strong also for the presence of musicians such as Cormac Mc Diarmada (vocals, fiddle, viola, banjo, bowed banjo) and Radie Peat (vocals, harp, concertina, harmonium, mellotron) the band released three albums, more and more keen on rivisiting their cultural heritage and folk Irish music, even if full of ‘strange’ accents coming from their many influences. In 2017 they signed with Rough Trade finally, and released their first album as Lankum titled Between the Earth and Sky.

Other musicians involved in the current Lankum’s line up are John Murphy (subsonic, vocals, samples), John Dermody (percussions), Cormac Begley (bass concertina), Sadhbh Peat (concertina), Andy Fenstermaker (vocals), Iona Zajac (vocals) and Ruth Clinton (theremin). The amount of musicians involved obviously make you imagine the variety and the nuances of the music you’ll find in the album, one of the most impressive I’ve heard this year.

First band that comes to mind to many music lovers as far as ‘folk revival’, along maybe with Gloaming and Stick In The Wheel, and adored by legions of music critics, Lankum have released few time ago a new album this year, and it is possibly one of the most intense records you’ll listen to in 2023. But let’s start with deep diving the record, from the firs track to the last coda, in order to understand why this album is so special.

The record opens with the first single Go Dig My Grave, a choice against the current since it’s more than eight minutes long, but the visual impact of the video will be of help with people to familiarize with the band and its musical content. The song comes from a group of ballads originally created in 1611 circa, and many of the verses were originally composed as stanzas of various different ballads, such as A Forlorn’s Lover Complaint.

The theme is the death for love. But more than that, what is fascinating in this piece of music is the almost limping cadence, as of someone who can walk with difficulty – a tormented soul? It can be ... – that find it’s resolution in a coda that reminds the violin parts on the first GSYBE album F#A#∞ (Constellation, 1997). The coda is also the beginning of the following Clear Away in the Morning, a meager acoustic guitar melody interspersed by the noise sounds of a drone.

The vocal, doubled melody is representing a work song from a 1983 album by the folk singer Gordon Bok (from Camden, Mayne) with the vocal choruses fitting perfectly with the instrumental parts. After the first two songs, appears a Fugue (there are three, splitting the album in four parts) that is almost a noise crescendo abruptly stopping, and after that it begins Master, Crowley, a song Peat was made aware by the well known concertina player Noel Hill.

Featuring as special guests the concertina players Cormac Begley and Peat sister Sadhbh, the piece is a rhythmic variation on a theme and is a song that fills the air with tension – thanks also to some musical brushes that depict noise at the very core of the piece before the re-entering of the melody - in order to pass to the following track, Newcastle, of which Lankum were educated by Seàn Fitzgerald from The Deadlians, even if the song was first issued in 1651.

After another interlude, a second Fugue, it’s time for the acoustic guitars and voices to start the beautiful melody of Netta Perseus, with a coda where a musical heatbeat is superimposed to the violins. The New York Trader describes a criminal on board a ship being detected by supernatural means, with the violins and the concertina leaving you imagine what comes after, while Lord Abore and Mary Flynn is possibly a Scottish ballad that came to Ireland through the United States.

The most bare of the songs on the album is embellished by the vocal melodies both male and female, a Lankum trademark you’ll find all over in many of the songs, and by an instrumental, even if minimal, crescendo. After the last Fugue, it’s time to close the album with the intense On a Monday Morning, first released in 1966 with its melody for male vocals and acoustic guitar interspersed with the sparse sounds of a harmonium, and the final, 12 minutes long, The Turn, with its noisy but not randomly-executed and contained coda.

With its one hour and ten minutes of music, False Lankum is possibly my choice, if any, for a record of the year. Differently from lot of folk music I heard in the past, this is a reworking that takes into account many of the best musical experiences we had in the last twenty – to say the least! – years, and this way it applies to be one of the most intense, contemporary and original musical experiences you’ll find in 2023.