In a few days, Lankum will most likely win the 2023 Mercury Music Prize for their fourth album False Lankum – but don’t let that put you off.
Increasingly, the Irish quartet feel like they belong to the lineage of artists who have wreaked radical and lasting change upon British and Irish folk traditions, from Davey Graham, Fairport Convention and Pentangle to Steeleye Span, the Pogues and Lau. The kind of artists who burrow deep into the forest of tradition in order to plant dynamite within the heartwood.
At times, we might have been below deck on a ship heading for Ellis Island
Appearing at the Edinburgh International Festival (EIF), Lankum played a set spilling over with invention, irreverence and attrition. Four chairs lined the front of the stage, all but obscured by a sea of exotic instruments – pump organs, pipes, acoustic guitars, accordions, a hurdy-gurdy; the kinds of instruments musicians strap themselves into and then hang on to for dear life.
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