Top quality Irish folk bands collide in this excellent side project.

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As soon as we saw Cormac MacDiarmada had a new project set to release an album, we had to get a listen of it. Lankum are probably our favourite band on the planet right now and each member has a wide array of talents. This project began in lockdown when Cormac and Ruth Clinton, of Landless, were stuck at home without their usual collaborators, bringing in drummer John Dermody of The Jimmy Cake 18 months down the line. Lankum have become one of the biggest forces in Irish folk music with their highly experimental and unorthodox reworking of classic folk songs. Landless are an all-female fourpiece who sing in four-part harmony. Their songs have a much more traditional feel to them. This project is more Lankum adjacent, with a range of different techniques on display.

There are just 8 tracks here, however the average length works out above 5 minutes in length so you can hardly feel short changed. Most are interpretations of much older tunes. ‘Adieu Lovely Eireann’ starts strongly. Ruth Clinton sings in a high, angelic tone over a repetitive but insistent drum rhythm. It sets the tone and the mood straight away. ‘Bury Me Not’ has a warbling keyboard sound before Clinton’s vocals again impress.

‘The Whole Town Knows’ brings MacDiarmada’s voice alongside. Vocally this feels very traditionally Irish folk, the backing is again pulling in a slightly different direction – the rhythmic, propulsive drumming a key feature of the album style.

MacDiarmada then takes the lead vocals on the beautiful ‘Loreen.’ This is a slower, more meditative track centring on a relationship that has broken down, or at the very least a letter is long overdue leading to much heart wringing from the protagonist. ‘An Draighneán Donn’ (translating as ‘The Blackthorn Bush’) is a classic Irish folk love song but here the backing becomes a transcendent shimmer, turning it into something almost entirely different in mood. MacDiarmada performs an extended deconstruction at the end on his fiddle. ‘All Smiles Tonight’ returns to the style of the ‘Bury Me Not’ for a similar sounding effort.

‘Hick’s Farewell’ adds a strong emotive depth to the proceedings and ‘Willie O’ continues the vibes and feels with minimal backing letting Clinton’s voice shine as the star of the piece.

This is not as strong as the last couple of Lankum albums, but it is a substantive piece of work in its own right. This collaboration definitely has legs and seems sure to reappear with more work in the future. This will go down well with anyone who has a passing interest in Irish folk music or enjoys emotive songs about relationships. They are doing a free performance (or buy a record or CD as well) at Rough Trade East on the 14th of this month. If we hadn’t burned through our travel money for the next few months we would have been there.

CD: https://amzn.to/46xN25u

Vinyl: https://amzn.to/44oDubx