Mary Wallopers, The: Paddywhackery (CD)

Dundalk’s finest The Mary Wallopers have announced details of their third album – produced by James Skelly of The Coral and packed with their own songs - a new single and their biggest headline tour to date, including arena shows in Scotland and Ireland.

Paddywhackery follows up 2023’s hugely acclaimed Irish Rock’n’Roll. That album saw the band grow in confidence, writing their own songs for the first time. Paddywhackery finds them leaping forwards to create an album that sounds like it’s been made by a band with a tightness and a power that’s unparalleled in music right now.

Recorded in an intense two-week period in Liverpool with producer James Skelly and engineer Chris Taylor, Paddywhackery lets the band’s grand wildness shine through and allows their songs to flow out of the speakers with the kind of verve and potency that will make you - the listener - press play again, and again, and again.

Andrew and Charles Hendy on the album: “It’s mainly about the fact that people would call us “paddywhackery” because we are too Irish or whatever, but it’s all very fucking hip to be Irish the last couple of years, and maybe that’s performative too, it’s very sincere. If all you do is serious songs, it sterilises everything. It becomes like there’s only one human emotion and its seriousness.

People are terrified of being laughed at. If people are going to call us paddywhackery anyway, we might as well just call the album Paddywhackery. So it's more of a “fuck you” than anything else. We want to spread like a virus and destroy anyone who thinks they are above The Mary Wallopers”.

1. Crowns of England
2. The Juice
3. Seán na Sagart
4. Smuggling the Tin
5. Castlecoe Hill
6. The Big Mixer
7. Worker's Song
8. Banks of the Roses
9. Landlord's Demise
10. Kit Kat Club
11. Mickey Dam