When False Lankum was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize in September 2023, critics scrambled to explain what, exactly, Lankum are. The short answer is a Dublin quartet built from uilleann pipes, fiddle, bayan, and voices. The longer answer is that they are the most unsettling and formally ambitious group working in the tradition of Irish folk right now, and they have been making that case record by record since signing to Rough Trade in 2017.
Where the Band Came From
Ian Lynch and Daragh Lynch grew up in Rialto, on the south side of Dublin, a neighborhood that sits close enough to the city center to feel the pull of urban noise but far enough away to develop a distinct working class sensibility. Cormac Mac Diarmada joined from the traditional music circuit. Radie Peat, who plays bayan and harmonium with a physicality that resembles weight training more than folk performance, completed the lineup. The four had been performing together under different names before settling on Lankum, a name drawn from an old Irish folk song. They released their debut as Lynched in 2014, changed the name to Lankum, and returned in 2017 with Between the Earth and Sky on Rough Trade, which placed their traditional Irish arrangements against contemporary production and found critics paying attention. None of them needed to clean up the sound to make it land.
The Sound That Defines Them
Lankum do not decorate folk songs. They excavate them. The band's primary sonic characteristic is the drone, a sustained low frequency that runs beneath the melody like a fault line running under a city. Ian Lynch operates uilleann pipes and tape loops. Cormac Mac Diarmada plays fiddle and viola with an expressiveness that blurs the line between traditional ornament and extended technique. Radie Peat's bayan provides a push and pull that makes even the quieter songs feel pressurized. What producer John Murphy does, recording and mixing at Guerrilla Sounds studio in Clondalkin, is make sure the drone does not become wallpaper. It remains an active structural element throughout, something that can swallow a melody or release it, sometimes within the same measure.
False Lankum and What It Changed
False Lankum, released on 24 March 2023 through Rough Trade Records, is the record that made the argument final. It opens with "Go Dig My Grave," a piece built so slowly and with such deliberate harmonic pressure that by the time the vocals enter it feels like surfacing from water. The album cycles through murder ballads, sea songs, and original compositions, treating them as continuous with one another rather than categorically distinct. There is no line between traditional and contemporary on this record. The Mercury Prize shortlisting mattered less than the fact that the album appeared on nearly every serious end of year list for 2023, from Mojo to The Wire, and that its Metacritic score of 89 indicated near unanimous critical acclaim. Jim Wirth of Mojo described it as the folk music equivalent of OK Computer. That is not a small claim, and it was not made carelessly.
The Voice Question
Lankum are a band built on four part harmonies, but that description undersells the strangeness of what they do with those voices. Radie Peat's lead vocals carry a grief that functions independently of the lyrics. When she sings the opening minutes of "Go Dig My Grave," the melody is almost secondary to what her voice is communicating on its own. Ian Lynch's voice carries a roughness that is less about stylistic choice and more about genuine wear. Daragh Lynch and Cormac Mac Diarmada fill the harmonic spaces with a precision that makes the whole structure feel architectural. These are not pretty harmonies deployed to smooth an arrangement. They are load bearing. Remove any one of them and the building falls.
Three Nights at Vicar Street
In 2024, Lankum recorded Live in Dublin across three consecutive sold out nights at Vicar Street, the mid capacity venue on Thomas Street that functions as one of the premier live rooms in Dublin for this kind of music. The live album captured something the studio records approach but cannot fully reproduce, which is the cumulative pressure of a Lankum performance sustained over two hours in a room full of people who have gone silent. When the drone builds in that context it produces an experience that has more in common with a collective ritual than a rock show. The band does not play the crowd. They play the room, and the room changes in response.
The Present Tense
In March 2026, a new recording of "Hunting the Wren," made with Fontaines D.C. vocalist Grian Chatten, appeared on the soundtrack for Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man. The collaboration was not surprising to anyone who follows either band closely. Both are rooted in the Irish working class, both are formally serious, and both have moved far enough outside their starting points to make a meeting feel organic rather than promotional. Lankum released a cover of The Specials' "Ghost Town" in October 2025 through Rough Trade Records, which read less as a novelty and more as a statement of continuity. Ghost towns, displacement, the weight of community memory. These are exactly the subjects Lankum have been circling for a decade. The cover did not feel like a detour. It felt like a direct address, and it clarified something about what the band has always been building toward.
