Madra Salach at New Century

Madra Salach means “dirty dog” in Irish, and singer Paul Banks, by all accounts, lives up to the name onstage. The Guardian‘s feature on the band flagged a “feral, snarling energy” running through their take on Ireland’s ongoing folk revival, before describing Banks as an “astonishing force” whose unruliness they likened to Liam Gallagher. To anyone who’s listened to the measured balladry of their debut EP, this might all sound a bit surprising.

But that tension seems to define them. Madra Salach share plenty of reference points with contemporaries like Lankum and Lisa O’Neill – harmonium, mandolin and tin whistle sit at the centre of their sound, and their fantastic EP It’s a Hell of an Age brings more tradition: covers like ‘Spancil Hill’ pair with originals like ‘Murphy Can Never Go Home’, which traces an Irish labourer’s slow drift from home while working in Britain. It’s stark and pained material, and it’s very beautiful indeed. Live, though, Madra Salach threaten to tip into something rowdier.

That threat is still mostly a promise rather than a document; only those who’ve attended their Dublin pub sessions, their packed festival sets, or their recent sold-out headline gigs have the full picture. The rest of us get a mere taste with the live version of their crushingly beautiful song, ‘The Man Who Seeks Pleasure’, released specifically to capture the live energy and arrangements that the EP cannot contain.

After listening to It’s a Hell of an Age, Madra Salach became a must-watch in our book, and that was before we were tantalised with all this vaguely-Jekyll-and-Hyde business. At New Century, on a UK tour where dates either side have already sold out, that’s the pitch: one thing on record and another thing live. That gap, arguably, is what’s most worth turning up for.