Lankum – The Livelong Day
Rough Trade Records – 25 October 2019
Our first impression of what to expect from Lankum’s third album The Livelong Day came in early September with the four-piece’s reinterpretation of hearty Irish classic, The Wild Rover. Over the five-minute course of the single’s video, Director Ellius Grace led us through a hallucinatory heathland, totally devoid of people. Deeply-inspired by folk horror, he later revealed: “I wanted to channel these very deliberate visions of the countryside as a place of both beauty and darkly storied unknown, steeped in our nation’s folklore”.
The result is an unnerving pastoral scene that strongly recalls the psilocybin-warped visuals of Ari Aster’s Midsommar. Cult hit Midsommar (which more or less swaps The Wicker Man’s Summerisle for the rural seclusion of Sweden’s Hårga) was scored by Bobby Krlic (aka the Haxan Cloak) and just as Krlic uses strings to push the soundtrack into more severe, exploratory extremes than most horror movies, Lankum are able to use acoustic drone to create a skin-crawling sense of foreboding unlike anyone else working in folk music. Compare the flatlining violin of Krlic’s Gassed with the chilling slide of The Wild Rover’s intro and you’ll recognise a lot of crossover in that mounting tension. Fans of the Dublin quartet will already know that they are no strangers to brooding soundscapes. However, the atmosphere on The Livelong Day eclipses everything, blacking out the sky like those bloated cumulus clouds captured by Grace.
Lankum partly have sound tech, producer and ‘fifth member’ John ‘Spud’ Murphy to thank for that. Through innovative recording techniques and with his deep understanding of their sound, Murphy was able to help the band delve into uncharted sonic territory this time around. Lankum recently shared a playlist highlighting some of Spud’s musical references for the studio sessions, and although some selections may seem unexpected at first, it all falls into place once you’ve heard the record. After you’ve been subjected to the weight of their ‘ancient drone’, the motorik pulse and ambient sinewaves of Harmonia, the outsider approach of Slint and the pummeling noise-rock of Swans all add up.
Admittedly though, these stylistic comparisons can only serve us so well. Lankum are not to be mistaken for a folk fusion band awkwardly shoehorning in different genre troupes to impress a certain audience. As they’ve made fairly clear, “We don’t fuck with it, we know where we’re coming from… well maybe we do fuck with it a bit”. By the last minute of The Wild Rover, it feels as if your world is falling in on you. With bows tearing and thrusting, their raw intensity continues to bore down further until the earth seemingly splits beneath you, signalled here by the subterranean gape of the harmonium. Like the grinding of plate tectonics, you recognise something shift deep within you.
Having doubled-down on their use of instrumentation, introducing mellotron, double bass, tin whistle, percussion and trombone (alongside a line-up of Uilleann pipes, concertina, fiddle and bracing harmonies) the spread across The Livelong Day remains remarkably well-balanced. Just as a song’s graveness threatens to overwhelm the listener, the band manage to fight back the shadows, as displayed in the fading of The Wild Rover into Young People. Underpinned by an aching melody that builds to a rousing, endless chorus, what lyrically begins as disturbing, eventually becomes a bittersweet triumph.
Lankum have described the record as “a combination of being desperately depressing and hopeful at the same time” which explains the glorious grey area you find yourself straddling emotionally. Radie Peat’s lead on Katie Cruel stands as a prime example of this. Taking cues from Karen Dalton’s sombre rendition, it becomes a slow-drawn dirge in Lankum’s hands. Naked, world-weary and utterly bewitching. Sometimes you stumble upon lyrics that are unshakable in their poignancy and toiling with regret and acceptance, Katie Cruel certainly fits that bracket:
If I was where I would be
Then I’d be where I am not
Here I am where I must be
Where I would be, I can not
Having never lost touch of their anarchic punk spirit, it’s the band’s passion and respect for folk song that makes The Livelong Day such essential listening. Katie Cruel happens to have ties to the Scottish Licht Bob’s Lassie, which is about the struggles of a sex worker. As Peat’s afflicted chant takes over, in her delivery it’s as if she’s communing with something beyond our reckoning. Much like how contemporaries Richard Dawson and Lisa O’Neill handle traditional material, there’s the sense as a listener that you are bearing witness to a visceral connection that reaches back across time.
County Cavan’s O’Neill is actually a close friend of the band. As part of a songwriting challenge, Ian Lynch encouraged the River Lea signee to write the unforgettable Violet Gibson (which appeared on her last record Heard A Long Gone Song) and she, in turn, presented him with the tragic story of the ‘Wrens of the Curragh’, which inspired closing track Hunting the Wren:
Sharp is the wind
Cold is the rain
Harsh is the Livelong Day
Upon the wide open plain
In tribute to the ‘women who had, in one way or another, put themselves beyond the pale of respectable society, living rough on the plains of the Curragh, County Kildare, in the 19th century’ the trudging ode opens up into a sublime march of resistance. Elsewhere, the deep-rooted bluegrass of Bear Creek and popular ‘Gypsy Laddie’ ballad The Dark Eyed Gypsy offer a more uplifting range; the latter practically a lullaby following Katie Cruel.
Writhing with the terror of our times one moment, then rising with indescribable heart and hunger the next; this is traditional song stretched and submerged. Radie recently claimed, “it’s the kind of album we’ve been trying to make for years, we haven’t compromised” and you can hear that as a listener. Of all the artists working within the rather loose confines of alternative folk (O’Neill, Dawson, Stick In The Wheel, Sam Amidon and Anna & Elizabeth, to name a few standouts) The Livelong Day surely puts Lankum at the forefront. Direct and otherworldly, undoubtedly, it’s going to take more time to absorb, but right now to these ears, it sounds timeless.
Forthcoming Lankum Tour Dates:
Oct 24th – Empire Music Hall, Belfast
Oct 25th – Vicar Street, Dublin **SOLD OUT**
Nov 13th – Bullingdon Arms, Oxford
Nov 14th – Brudenell, Leeds
Nov 16th – Stereo, Glasgow
Nov 17th – Band On The Wall, Manchester
Nov 18th – Fiddlers, Bristol
Nov 19th – Komedia, Brighton
Nov 20th – Hare & Hounds, Birmingham
Nov 21st – Tufnell Park Dome, London
Nov 23rd – Quiet Lights Festival, Cork
Nov 26th – Merleyn, Nijmegen
Nov 27th – Paradiso, Amsterdam
Nov 29th – Alice, Copenhagen
Nov 30th – Muziekpublique, Brussels
Jan 4th – Vicar Street, Dublin