• The Nyahh made me do it: an interview with Willie Stewart

    This interview originally appeared in The Thin Air’s summer 2022 print edition It’s spring in Leitrim. The sky is full of birdsong, trees and plants are coming back to life, and Willie Stewart has been mixing cement. Alongside his partner, the sound artist Natalia Beylis, he’s converting his backyard and old stone outbuildings into what he describes as a “future habitat for creative explorations”.  The pair’s life revolves around these explorations, which they frequently let out into the world via shared and respective projects. Both are members of the experimental psych band Woven Skull, and have a wide array of…

  • Merchy Christmas at the Grand Social, Dublin

    Returning for its second consecutive year, Merchy Christmas will take over Dublin’s Grand Social later this month to throw Irish artists a lifeline in the face of the huge challenges presented by COVID-19. Running from 10am-4pm on Saturday 18th and Sunday 19th December, countless TTA favourites including Lankum, Myles Manley, Junior Brother, Pillow Queens, Silverbacks, Nealo and Loah will set up stall for a real-life merch market. “The Christmas merch sale last year was one of the highlights of the year for me,” said Nealo. “It was heartwarming to meet people face to face and to hang out and chat…

  • Irish Tracks of the Week – September 4th

    It’s been yet another stellar week for new releases in every corner of the island, boosted by today being the monthly Bandcamp Friday, which sees the platform waive all its own cuts – take that, Spotify. Delve into the best of the lot, featuring Lankum, Girl Band, JYellowL, NewDad, Arvo Party, A Bad Cavalier, Girl Band, Æ Mak, Alpha Chrome Yayo and many more. Girl Band – Why They Hide Their Bodies Under My Garage (Live at Vicar Street) Live at Vicar Street by Girl Band A Bad Cavalier – Losers Losers by A Bad Cavalier Lankum feat. Spider Stacy…

  • Win Tickets to Lankum’s A National Disgrace at the Abbey Theatre

    Even for an act widely known – and revered – for their forward-pushing music, Dublin quartet Lankum’s latest foray is one of their most singular yet. On Saturday, August 15th, the band presents the highly-anticipated A National Disgrace, a self-described “gradual descent into a warped, dreamworld of musical performance, theatre, winding passages, doorways, drones and existential uncertainty.” Set to stream live from the historic Abbey Theatre from 9pm, it will “revisit the power of live productions to provoke visceral and emotional responses, and explore the possibilities presented by the unfamiliar new world of virtual performance in which we find ourselves.” Accompanied by various…

  • Lankum – The Livelong Day

    If anyone was to be left in any doubt about the direction of Lankum’s third full-length release The Livelong Day, its opening track, a reworking of traditional drinking song ‘The Wild Rover’, dispels any notion that this is a standard folk album. Almost unrecognisable from its usual configuration as an oft-performed tune at a trad knees-up, ‘The Wild Rover’ Lankum-style is a profoundly chilling storm of tension and foreboding, one which lays the groundwork for an astoundingly innovative album from one of the Irish folk scene’s shining lights. For those familiar with Lankum’s stunning previous work, the tendency to tear up the rulebook will…

  • Lankum Announced New Album, Release ‘The Livelong Day’

    It’s official: Dublin folk miscreants Lankum will release their new album The Livelong Day via Rough Trade on October 25. Coinciding with the announcement is the unveiling of the band’s masterful take on ‘The Wild Rover’. The band said of the single, which is accompanied by a video by Ellius Grace: “There are countless renditions of this tune, it is a song very much rooted within the dirt and peat of Ireland, but the revelation of a little known final verse takes it from a jovial pub tale to one of sadness and destitution. The actual crux of the song becomes…

  • The Thin Air Podcast: Lankum and Yoni Wolf (Why?)

    Having kicked off with music and chat from Frankie Cosmos and Paddy Hanna, The Thin Air podcast continues with another brace of brilliant interviews. Danny Carroll meets Dublin folk miscreants Lankum to discuss their mournfully epic song ‘The Granite Gaze’.  Along with producer Spud, the group talk through the lyrical origins of the song, listen back to an early demo, and highlight individual elements of the track’s swelling arrangement. Yoni Wolf Our other installment features Yoni Wolf, singer and songwriter with the Cincinnati group Why? Ahead of returning to Ireland, to play the Button Factory (September 17th) and Roisin Dubh (September…

  • Katie Kim & Radie Peat set to collaborate for A Night of Musical Stories

    In association with MusicTown, two of Ireland’s finest contemporary artistic voices bring a one-off, collaborative show at Dublin’s Pepper Canister Church on April 14. Amongst a handful of folk-rooted artists in recent years to demarcate themselves from the rest of the pack, drone-folk songwriter Katie Kim – listen to her fourth album Salt – and multi-instrumentalist vocalist Radie Peat – also known for her groundbreaking approach to folk with Lankum & Rue – are right at the top. This all-ages concert encompasses murder ballads, folklore, traditional and contemporary musical arrangements, performing music both self-penned, and from past traditions to bing together themes of the human condition. “Darkness through light, misadventure and…