Paul Banks stands with his hands leaning on top of his mic stand, looking out over the Electric Ballroom crowd. It’s nearly the end of Madra Salach’s first of two sold-out nights at the London venue – the Dublin band’s biggest shows to date – and a sustained drone eking out from Maxime Arnold’s harmonium indicates how they’re going to wrap things up. Over the last 12 months or so, ‘The Man Who Seeks Pleasure’ has become their de facto set closer – a finale that seems to grow in intensity and emotion every time they play it.
Tonight (October 13) is no different. It’s as full of feeling in its quieter moments, when it’s just Banks and the drone commanding the room, or in the spaces in between, as when the layers build to dramatic heights. As Banks’ vocals grow from gentle intonation to affecting rasps, so too does the audience begin to join in. This is a lightning-in-a-bottle kind of song – one with something almost magical to it in the way it can make your tear ducts fill up on demand, but feels like only the six-piece who wrote it could really harness the full extent of its power.
The Madra Salach live experience might typically end with this eruption of emotion, but everything that comes before more than lives up to the finish, too. The band’s dizzying ascension has been propelled by their gigs, and for good reason – of the current crop of new bands on the scene, they are far and away one of the most captivating. There’s rarely a note in their set that you can’t feel, whether delivered via the voice of Banks (an incredibly expressive vocalist) or the physicality of the band’s performance. During an opening cover of Ewan McColl’s ‘The Tunnel Tigers’, the original given a healthy dose of punk grit, multi-instrumentalist Jack Martin’s arms slicing downwards through the air between attacking the keys of his synths.
Continuing the folk tradition of passing down stories through generations, tonight’s setlist features a handful of covers alongside ‘The Tunnel Tigers’ – some that have become a part of the Madra Salach story, and some fresh reworkings, too. Banks introduces each with context, history and humour. An incendiary version of The Pogues’ ‘Turkish Song Of The Damned’ will feature on an upcoming tribute album to Shane MacGowan – “a big influence on the band, and not just because of my teeth,” Banks quips.
‘Murphy Can Never Go Home’, which featured on and gave the title to their debut EP ‘It’s A Hell Of An Age’, details Mick Curry’s move from Ireland to Birmingham in search of work. “I suppose that’s what we’re doing,” the frontman adds, noting that the fabled “gold lining the streets” of the UK is really “just Holiday Inns”. The spirit of protest comes out in an urgent take on Sinéad O’Connor’s ‘Black Boys On Mopeds’ and Lankum’s poignant ‘The Rocks Of Palestine’, that harmonium drone put to good use once again.
Rather than just carry forward the tales of others, Madra Salach are adding their own to the canon, too. Latest single ‘Ribbon Factory’ arrives early on, its insistent stomp thundering through the venue, while ‘Blue And Gold’’s delusions of impending grandeur are intoxicating. And then there’s ‘The Man Who Seeks Pleasure’’s exploration of the thin line between pleasure and pain that becomes even more stunning on stage.
It’s already been a big year for the six-piece, but as they begin to look towards 2027 and their debut album ‘Gorta’, nights like tonight make something incredibly clear: Madra Salach are only getting better and better, and their shows more powerful even as they move through bigger rooms.
Madra Salach played:
‘The Tunnel Tigers’
‘Ribbon Factory’
‘BOLG’
‘Stones’
‘Turkish Song of The Damned’
‘Murphy Can Never Go Home’
‘Blue And Gold’
‘In The Aeroplane Over The Sea’
‘I Was Just A Boy’
‘The Rocks Of Palestine’
‘Cranes’
‘Black Boys On Mopeds’
‘Searrach’
‘The Man Who Seeks Pleasure’
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