Live Review: Lankum - Eventim, London 26/10/2024
Irish folk band Lankum are one of the best in the industry at the moment; able to captivate an audience and reduce them to sheer silence for much of their set like no other. Returning to the Hammersmith Apollo for the first time since the Mercury Awards, they’re back in London for an eager crowd – already full by the time Richard Dawson, support turned up, who Lankum jokingly say that their manager will only go and see their gigs if they book him as support, and here they have. Coupled with Dawson talking about if a particularly intense song kills him he’d rather be eaten alive and his neighbour, who’s come all the way from the North East, gets first dibs on which body part he’d take first – there’s a lot of mid-set humour between songs both in band and support, with Lankum riffing about whether takeaway pizza was a thing in ‘70s England (it wasn’t, per the crowd), and joking about how Shoreditch’s ice cream has become all gentrified. It’s the humour that will make or break the band – audiences jokingly told them to play the music, but this added to their appeal – a fly on the wall band that has put so much heart and soul into their music it’s hard not to love, bringing traditional songs to the forefront of modern music and joining them with something new.
Richard Dawson wasn’t quite brave enough to commit to his 41 minute song as support but was a real commitment to his craft, providing lengthy introductions about the reasons behind his songs: Museum, a typically brilliant exercise in songwriting as a way to evoke imagination and sheer vision, was about an AI finding a museum on Earth and discovering its history. To listen to Dawson is to witness the ghosts of old England coming through in his voice; a sheer questioning of whether it’s better to live in a world where ghosts or they don’t. The Almsgiver n particular is a masterstroke – a folk song without instruments, almost five minutes of shambolica, because to call it shambolic as spotify describes almost feels rude. It’s anything but – a fly on the wall artist who really shines. His guitar solo that dominated Judas Iscariot drew tons of applause form the audience, and wrapping up with Scientist showed how skilled an artist he is – at the top of his game, both Dawson and Lankum performed this year at End of the Road festival together, and Dawson is able to show why he deserves to be a bigger name on the folk scene with ease.
Lankum came onto The Wild Rover, repurposing a very popular and well-travelled folk song that is a rite of passage for any folk artist, but Lankum have well and truly made it their own. The story of a young man who is been away from his hometown for many years and returning home strikes a chord, and it isn’t long before the band are into The New York Trader. It’s experimental and the song structures aren’t as traditional as Irish folklore and here you see them getting the chance to shine with their own take on it – “to the new York trader I did belong, she was fit for sea both stout and strong,” and it isn’t long before the crowd start dancing like they’re on the lower decks of the Titanic on its maiden voyage before disaster. (Earlier this week, Lankum had to abort a show early because of flooding). We’re witnessing a band tell their own tales of dangers on the road, mutinies at sea, but the high point of the evening is reserved for a pairing of protest songs, timely and of the moment – those who wish to stay silent when they can speak up are telling you something. Lankum have never been one to shy away from the liberation of Palestine – their song The Rocks of Palestine followed by Rudi Goguel’s Peat Bog Soldiers, leading one of Europe’s best known protest songs first performed in 1933 in a Nazi concertation camp by prisoners meant it is now viewed as a symbol of resistance. Chants of Free Palestine rang out loudly through the audience; and Ian Lynch tells the crowd they were a lot better than Germany. Like IDLES they wear their heart on their sleeve; and incorporating protest songs into their set shows a band at the top of their game, able to adapt to the moment.
Through the first half of the set, the crowd call for Lankum to be louder. They oblige, and the string of The Tri-Coloured House, Master Crowley’s and then Rocky Road to Dublin shows that they’re almost telling a ghost story, repurposing a mixture of covers and original folklore to tell their own mythology as haunting as the myths and legends themselves. Rocky Road to Dublin puts Lankum’s own stamp on DK Gavan’s original work, and it’s something that the band revel in – the well-trodden path of a young Irishman leaving home to go to Dublin for a job and the struggles on the way. Their songs are lengthy and they use up the entire time allocated to them, capping in at curfew at 11pm, and they have the crowd’s attention for the entire evening – spectacular lighting ensures that it’s hard to look away, a regular feature of their sets; appropriately cinematic, appropriately mythical. A truly otherworldly evening.
On A Monday Morning tells the story of many a hangover; Lynch points out to the audience that he is three years sober. The band end on The Turn but rather than stop for the encore keep the song going and come back out to Netta Perseus, admitting to the audience and breaking the ruse that they know they’ll be coming back out for the encore and their last song, The Turn, isn’t their last song. Encores are such a feature of shows that they revel in the anticipation and the delight of their return – ending with Bear Creek and Go Dig My Grave, showing the expert vocals of Radie Peat; able to enrapture the audience making sure nobody left early. It’s richly haunting and showcases the band’s verstality of its members at its best – one of the strongest single shows of the year able to cross boundaries and draw in many who don’t listen to folk regularly. It’s a soundtrack to a folk horror film that’s never been made, able to draw the audience to tears in parts and captivate them on an emotional juggernaut of a journey. Simply spectacular as an experience – Daragh Lynch and Cormac MacDiarmada showcase their haunting symphonies in perfect synchronisation - and they’re joined by John Dermondy on drums for a special show; thunderous and atmospheric as no other band. When you see Lankum live it’s a unique experience that you won’t forget – and the smaller, the more intimate venue the better – few bands are able to transport you to a setting quite as well as they can; building a whole mythology over the course of an evening.
Words by Miles Milton-Jefferies
