IT’S a grey and dreary Dublin day and the rain falls hard on the Phibsborough Road. It’s the kind of Monday morning that Lankum occasionally sing about: “Too soon to be out of bed/Too soon to be back at this bus-queue caper/Or fumbling for change for my picture paper/On a Monday morning”.
Through the splash of traffic we arrive at the Brian Boru, one of many Dublin pubs mentioned in Ulysses, but one of the few to still to be open. For Lankum it’s tapwaters all round, and very much the Monday after the Thursday before. Last week they were at the Hammersmith Apollo, performing their uncanny, unholy version of “Go Dig My Grave” live on BBC4 at the Mercury Prize, on a bill including Jessie Ware, Young Fathers and eventual winners, Ezra Collective.
For a week or two before the awards, the band found themselves at the eye of an unlikely media storm. By the day of the announcement, they were, implausibly, dark horse favourites for the prize.
“Is it the strangest thing to ever happen to us?” wonders Daragh Lynch over soup and salad. “It’s definitely up there. Strange things do keep happening to us, but I don’t think we ever expected this.”
“It was good to do the Mercurys but we’re definitely glad it’s over,” says Ian. “There was a relief as well. No more interviews…” Apart from this one!
If they’re weary of the hype cycle, Lankum are still engaging and hilarious company, finishing each other’s sentences like old hands trading phrases at a session. Today it’s just the three lads – Daragh, beaming, a kind of mischievous Irish Dave Grohl; Ian, thoughtfully intense, like the lost anarcho-punk member of Sleaford Mods; and Cormac, a kindly wizard who might have played in Gong in 1972. We catch up later with Radie Peat, whose keening voice and sepulchral, deep-space harmonium are two of the band’s most defining features. She returned from the Mercurys.
