Lankum: False Lankum album review — tales of bloodshed and betrayal

Lankum’s new album opens with a suicide. Those familiar with the Dublin band’s take on traditional music will be unsurprised by the grim subject matter. The foursome are adept at bringing out the darkness in the broadside ballads and reels of Irish and British folk. Tales of bloodshed and betrayal are given a tumultuous intensity reminiscent of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds or Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Their approach has prompted comparisons to the post-punk reboot that The Pogues gave Irish music in the 1980s.

False Lankum is their fourth album. It amplifies the sonic extremes of its predecessor The Livelong Day, which won the Choice Music Prize in 2019, Ireland’s equivalent of the UK’s Mercury prize. “Go Dig My Grave” is the opening track. Splitting the difference between Irish folk and the most desolate blues, vocalist Radie Peat keens the story of a young woman spurned in love who hangs herself. A funereal drumbeat, clashing chords and oppressive drones have the tense feel of a horror movie. The drawn-out denouement evokes a terrible scene of creaking rope and nightmarish shock.

“The New York Trader”, sung by Ian Lynch, turns a seafaring fable of murder and sacrifice into a ferociously driven psych-rock jig. There is more killing in “Lord Abore and Mary Flynn”, a deeply sorrowful ballad with lead vocals by Cormac Mac Diarmada. Folk revivalist Cyril Tawney’s account of struggling to get out of bed to go to work, “On a Monday Morning”, is made to sound too wheezy and defeated. But a downcast rendition of “Newcastle” hits the right note.

Described by folk singer Shirley Collins as “one of the loveliest English dance tunes”, this tale of outcast lovers ceases to be quite so lovely in Lankum’s hands. Where Collins’s voice rises optimistically at the line “Why shouldn’t my love love me?”, Peat’s vocal goes in the opposite direction. She brings a mournful slant to what might otherwise be a romantic dream of freedom. The interpretation is typical of this gothic, flinty band, and no less truthful to the song.

★★★★☆

‘False Lankum’ is released by Rough Trade