Lankum - False Lankum (Vinyl LP)

The fourth album from the Dublin four-piece, and the one that pushed them from cult acclaim into something much bigger. Built from ten traditional songs and two originals, the band lean further into the heavy drones and sonic distortion that have become their signature, working once again with longtime producer John 'Spud' Murphy. Part of the record was made while the band stayed in a Martello tower on the east coast, and it shows: the album moves like the sea, extraordinarily heavy in places, light and tender in others. Music Musings & SuchThe Indiependent Radie Peat's stark reading of 'Go Dig My Grave' opens the record, building from a lone voice into something genuinely unsettling, while the twelve-minute closer 'The Turn' takes the band's sound to its outer limits. Between them sit some of the finest recordings of traditional material this decade. The first folk album shortlisted for the Mercury Prize in eleven years, False Lankum topped end-of-year lists at The Guardian, Uncut, and The Quietus, and won the RTÉ Choice Music Prize for Irish Album of the Year