Brògeal - Tuesday Paper Club

There’s a marked crossover from Celtic folk music at the moment. The Mary Wallopers now fill major rooms, while the likes of Lankum and Kingfishr edge the genre into the mainstream. Leading this charge are Brògeal, mixing the similarly imbued folk-punk of The Pogues and The Dubliners with indie-rock grandeur. Emerging during COVID, the band have since played pub basements up and down the country, packed festival stages, and nailed some high-profile support slots.


Each song layers vivid images of the pubs and streets of their home town of Falkirk (‘Vicar Street Days’), and its people (‘Draw the Line’), making the record an immersive scrapbook of vignettes. But beneath the frenzied tales of beer-soaked nights runs a remarkably delicate sense of beauty. ‘Go Home Tae Yer Bed’, featuring a Gaelic verse from Lewis-based singer Josie Duncan, is a mournful ballad set to the dull thud of a pounding drum. Equally, ‘Scarlet Red’ strips away ornamentation, making for a bare-boned confessional love song.


The album reaches full force when Brògeal lean furthest into their roots. Take ‘Lonesome Boatman’, for example. A flute-led, frenzied instrumental, it often rounds off their live shows by soundtracking careening moshpits. Elsewhere, ‘One for the Ditch’ is an off-kilter singalong, where a mid-song tempo shift veers the track into beautiful disarray. On the title track, the band channel a similar drive, making for a galloping drinking soundtrack. Although Brògeal’s influences are clear, there’s a strong current of originality running throughout, and in the coming years, they look set to march to the beat of their own drum.