ALBUM OF THE YEAR
1 LANKUM False Lankum ROUGH TRADE
ONE of the abiding images of 2023 was the viral video taken at the height of Storm Babet, showing a forest floor undulating wildly like the waves of an angry sea. This is what False Lankum sounded like, a dire warning from the earth gods. Like many of the albums in Uncut’s Top 10 of the year, it eschewed standard rock drums in favour of slower, more ancient rhythms, the music enveloping you like a mist, or encircling you like an army of phantoms.
This Dublin quartet are not the kind of band to compromise what they do in search of an audience, and indeed False Lankum found them picking up new admirers while venturing to the very extremes of their patented ‘drone folk’ sound. At this year’s Mercury Prize awards ceremony, a rare chance for the nominated artists to flaunt their wares to a national TV audience, Lankum used the opportunity to play a “Go Dig My Grave”, a 17th-century suicide ballad that begins with a stark a cappella vocal and ends with the deafening screech of gears grinding in Hell.
Throughout the 70 minutes of False Lankum, the songs (mostly traditional, a couple self-penned) were sweeter and sadder, the drones more diabolical, revealing the band’s affinity for doom metal. These extremes were negotiated seamlessly via a series of interlinking, instrumental fugues, giving the album an immersive and dreamlike – or perhaps nightmarish – quality.
A heartening aspect of Lankum’s rise has been the way they’ve inspired other musicians to follow their lead, whether that’s traditional folk players trying something new, or experimental musicians getting in touch with their roots; you can hear some of the results on the Lankumcurated CD that came free with the previous issue of Uncut, still available from our online store. The musical future looks bright, even if everything else feels pretty uncertain.