With their second album The Livelong Day due on Friday October 25th, Lankum have released a video by Bob Gallagher to followup the album’s opening track ‘The Wild Rover’.
‘The Young People’ is indicative of the band’s growth on this record, which we’re very excited about after hearing a preview of the full thing.
The band explain the origin of the song:
The chorus of ‘The Young People’ first appeared as a kind of Scottish singalong in Daragh’s head one morning as he woke up, and not sure whether it was a traditional song he’d heard before, a composite of folk songs and melodies from his subconscious, or a completely original piece, he sang it into a dictaphone before it disappeared, like so many before it.
The band originally tried using it as a verse, writing others in the same style, but it didn’t seem to work quite as well as imagined. After sitting down and writing a couple of verses on suicide and loss one day, Daragh found that it fit perfectly as the chorus, providing some light to the darkness and adding a satisfying minor to major lift.
The resulting song, although quite mournful at times, is ultimately a reminder to cherish and appreciate your friends and loved ones while you still can.
The video was shot by Bob Gallagher at City Assembly House last month and he says of the shoot:
“It is set over an autumn morning in Dublin, with all the action happening in the same little sliver of time. The idea was inspired by the lyricism of the first verse, especially the line ‘his feet were ringing a bell’. I found myself thinking about the starkness of that image, but then also considering what sort of actions other people’s feet might be doing at the same time to contrast that. I was interested in the idea of doing a video with a street photography approach, shooting it in a simple documentary-style, and concentrating on just feet and legs, set against the textures of the city. I spent a lot of time travelling through Dublin with my eyes on the ground, watching and waiting for interesting moments to happen. The way people move through or occupy city spaces, even in the most routine ways, form a sort of interconnected ephemeral dance. You start to see that there’s something very expressive about feet that makes them easy to empathise with. You somehow see more of a person by seeing less of them in the frame”
The song was written and arranged by the band and recorded by John ‘Spud’ Murphy at The Meadow studio in Wicklow with additional overdubs at Guerrilla Sounds.
The band have Irish tour dates this month.
There’s also an interview in Billboard today.
