Tom Dunne: Watch out, the Irish are coming... again
Cathal Coughlan and Sean Hughes on the cover of NME. (Image via Brand New Retro)
In May 1992, when Irish confidence was nothing like it is now, when profuse apologies and cap tipping were still our thing, the NME put Cathal Coughlan and Sean Hughes on the cover. The masthead was in green, white and orange. Ireland, and being Irish was cool, apparently.
It was seismic. NME, the stalwart of cool anti-culture in the UK, had been borderline racist in its previous assessments of Irish talent, U2 and Sinead, notwithstanding. It was dismissive at best. Irish acts bloomed in Ireland and were cut down to size in the UK, that was the deal.
Maybe things were changing. A new breed of Irish was abroad, razor-sharp, very well-read, and acerbic. Cathal and Sean’s collaboration, under the name Bubonique, an album called 20 Golden Showers, said it all.
In March 1994 Select magazine got on the case too. Cathal and Sean were joined by Arthur Mathews and Graham Linehan, then the darlings of new comedy, Ardal O’Hanlon – “my name is Ardal, and I know a lot” - and Neil Hannon on the eve of the release the Promenade album. “Even Zig and Zag are emigrating,” said one of the wags.
Select, in its attempts to understand what lay at the centre of their collective charms, reasoned, that “they use a language, a reflex, a perverse logic, that can’t be completely traced back to Ireland but can’t have come from anywhere else, that floats through their work like a squatting cultural antibody, that puts them somewhere other people can’t go.”
Well, what can I say? If they thought that the Irish wave was amazing, how on earth are they going to survive this new one?
As we speak, Lankum, the Mary Wallopers and CMAT are taking the UK by storm. And Ye Vagabonds, John Francis Flynn and Lisa O’Neill are following in their wake. Geoff Travis, the man who signed The Smiths, just can’t seem to find enough Irish acts to sign to his new River Lea label.
CMAT, fresh from the triumph of a Graham Norton Show appearance, a couch shared with Miriam Margolyes, tweeted out as I write this that she has just sold out Barrowlands, Glasgow’s cavernous home of Billy Connolly. Add that to four sold-out Olympias and others in Brighton and London and it’s been quite the year.
Her album, Crazymad For Me, could be the album of the year.
But if it’s ‘sold-out’ signs you want, check out the Mary Wallopers. The UK appears on the verge of eating them alive. Shows are sold out from Southampton, to Bristol, from London to Manchester, and Edinburgh to Devon. Proof, if proof were needed, that when you have a sound that echoes The Dubliners and the Pogues, you can’t fail.
Their album, Irish Rock and Roll, might be the album of the year.
And then we have Lankum, like a nuclear version of Planxty, destroying all before them. It is during their interview and feature in the December issue of Uncut that the latest round of “what on earth is going on in Ireland” is expounded on at length.
Mention is made of our writers (Sally Rooney, Kevin Barry), the “great green wave” at this year’s Oscars, the Cartoon Saloon Irish folklore trilogy, the Blindboy podcast, and all of the music acts mentioned above. To this I’d add our UK based presenters, our comics and, dare I say it, rugby players.
But what is driving the thirst for our music? Neil Hannon in the Select interview, all those years ago, said something that I think still resonates: “People are getting tired of trash culture.” I don’t think trash culture ever quite cut it here for musical inspiration.
Uncut ponders that while Lankum’s music is rooted in the soil of Irish history, it has since branched out into everything – drones, electronic music, metal, My Bloody Valentine – and now resonates like nothing else in the modern world.
They’ll get no disagreement here.
Lankum’s False Lankum could well be, yes, you’ve guessed it, the album of the year.
On November 28th they will play 3Arena with The Mary Wallopers, Damien Dempsey, and Lisa O’Neill to raise funds for medical aid for Palestinians.
Meanwhile Christy Moore, the original of the species, is announcing dates for 2024 and The Saw Doctors haven’t gone away either.
What a time to be alive.
