Sonically speaking, we pretty much know what we are going to get from a Milkweed record by now: elements of traditional music, freak folk, dub and spoken word, knitted together by a recording technique which is both lo-fi and uncompromisingly avant-garde. Eldritch acoustic instrumentation set up slantwise against grainy, decayed tape noise. Ancient European mythology channelled by a voice that sounds like an Appalachian ghost. But somehow the inscrutable duo always manage to come up with something entirely surprising. The secret is in the material. For their last three releases, Milkweed have sourced their songs from obscure texts: a little-known academic journal published by The Folklore Society, a 1974 text on preserved Bronze Age human remains by Danish archaeologist Peter Glob, a book of Welsh myths.
For their latest project, Remscéla, they have chosen to engage with the Táin Bó Cúailnge, one of the Ulster Cycle of epics and a foundational myth of Irish literary and historical tradition. The original plan was to use every one of the 400 pages of Thomas Kinsella’s translation – a kind of maximalist constriction of Oulipan proportions – but such was the level of detail and diversity to be found in the first section – the remscéla, or pre-tales – that the duo decided to focus their attention on this smaller and stranger corner of the mythic world.
How the Táin Bó Cuailnge Was Found Again hides fragments of speech behind a minimal banjo refrain. It might not sound like much from that little description, but it is so instantly identifiable as a Milkweed song, so different from just about anything else, that it’s positively thrilling. Hearing a band sound so absolutely like themselves – yet never getting stuck in a creative rut – is a rare and beautiful thing.
Milkweed songs are normally short, or to put it another way, they are just long enough. So when a song like The Pangs of Ulster comes along at over four minutes, it feels like a kind of outlier, an epic in its own right. And indeed, The Pangs of Ulster is a kind of musical and thematic centrepiece, creation myth within creation myth, its lyrics telling the story of how the men of Ulster were cursed to feel the pain of childbirth, a curse that lies silent at the heart of the events in the Táin.
A big part of the Milkweed aesthetic is the way their singer, known only as G, converts her textual sources into a kind of insistent chant, a technique that lends a mysterious and cultish air to the songs (and which becomes almost mesmeric in a live setting). It’s there in How Conchobor was Begotten and in Téte Brec, the Twinkling Hoard, where R’s warped electronics create an eerie sense of distance and deterioration.
The attention to detail is greater than ever before, which results, perhaps counterintuitively, in a sound that is even more lo-fi than usual. The beats that form the backbone of the instrumental Drinking in the House of Fedlimid seem at first quite conventional, almost as if they had been transplanted from some long-lost reliquary of folktronica or trip-hop, but R patiently twists them, delays them, erases them, until the tune comes to resemble an ancient and shattered object. Imbas Forasnai, the Light of Foresight, is more forthright in its mangling of traditional sound and structure. Vocals are decayed to the edge of recognition and whole fragments of the tune are chipped away. Whiter than the Snow is the White Treasure of her Teeth, another instrumental, hardly seems to exist at all beyond a fraught filigree of plucked strings, skirting the edges of melody and improvisation.
By contrast, The Milk-Fed Calf fits its narrative into what seems like a familiar folk melody. The effect is still uncanny, but it is achieved from a different angle of approach. Exile of the Sons of Uisliu splices the processed beats to G’s chanting delivery, while the melody is punctuated by moments of near-silence or hollowness, and breaks down into discordance as it nears its end. Final track, Noisiu’s Voice a Wave Roar, a Sweet Sound to Hear Forever, begins in scraping, droning noise and switches part-way through to a clear, short, uncluttered banjo solo. It is the most conventionally pretty few seconds on the album, and for that reason alone, it provides an uncanny coda. It’s as if the album has its own lasting curse.
The wider world is no closer to knowing anything about Milkweed, at least in terms of biographical detail. Their only press photo shows them covering each other’s faces – just two brown coats and two pale pairs of hands are visible. Their partial invisibility reflects the way myth can disappear or lie dormant, the way that stories can wither away to nothing except a sense of mystery and still be brought back to life. But the duo’s self-negation also focuses our attention on the music, and on the amazing job they are doing of uncovering these old myths and presenting them in vibrant and vital ways. They remain the most exciting band in folk music.
Remscéla (May 2nd, 2025) Broadside Hacks recordings
Upcoming Milkweed Tour Dates: https://milkweed.lnk.to/Live2025