Madra Salach's 'Gorta' Turns Irish Hunger Into Punk Folk — SkimNews
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- Madra Salach released debut album Gorta (Irish for "hunger" or "famine"), with cover art by Oscar Torrans depicting a distressed, disintegrating face inspired by Sheela na gig carvings and Blemmyae "headless ones" mythology.
- Paul Banks, the band's singer, asked for artwork showing "hungry eyes" and a "wild, desperate expression," and frames hunger as "a hammer," "a sin," something "horrendous" that "kills."
- Banks credits Lankum and the Mary Wallopers for clearing a path abroad: where their bilingual folk songs might once have "bemused" European festival crowds, Madra Salach now play to audiences who no longer need "converting."
- The band deliver a "vicious, punky" take on Ewan MacColl's 1966 song "Tunnel Tigers" — written about Irish workers who dug the Thames tunnels for the Victoria Line — with bassist Jack Lawlor proposing a "fast, charged version" that Banks says brought out a side of the song "that wasn't always explored in the other versions."
- Beyond the Irish famine, Gorta explores "a more opaque type of yearning": on "Searrach" the narrator is "full but I'm craving," and on "Haunted Isle of Green" he is "hungry no more" yet "cannot shake off what I've seen."
- Banks says listeners have mistaken the band's original song "The Man Who Seeks Pleasure" for a centuries-old traditional folk tune — a reaction that "fills me with a lot of pride" and reinforces his view of folk songs as "this living, breathing thing with different characteristics."
Why it matters: Madra Salach's *Gorta* positions the group inside a documented wave — alongside Fontaines D.C., Lankum, CMAT and the Mary Wallopers — in which Irish music has filled arenas and festival main stages across Europe over the past decade. By rewriting MacColl's "Tunnel Tigers" as a snarling punk-folk track and writing originals that listeners mistake for tradition, the band claims a seat at the table reshaping how Irish folk is made and heard abroad.
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