Trá Pháidín cultivate a modernist Irish sound that defies easy categorisation

A little under a decade ago, four out of the six players on Cloch ‘s Claí were in a Cork City indie band called Little Indigo. Guitarist Peadar-Tom Mercier recollects that they “would have been the next Fontaines D.C.,” or something, but for one reason or another that didn’t happen. A different beast altogether is the group that rose from their ashes: Trá Pháidín are a band who could never be the next anything – but to you, they could be everything. One of the most fiercely original groups operating in Ireland today, the ever-evolving ensemble both celebrate and subvert the nation’s musical traditions. Formed in 2019 in County Galway, a Gaeltacht heartland where the Irish language remains widely spoken, Trá Pháidín are a tentacular improv outfit whose organic soundscapes teem and wriggle with life. Cloch ’s Claí – which roughly translates as “stone and dry-stone wall” – is their sublime second album, and first for London label World of Echo, and sees them building on the pastoral post-rock tapestries of their 2023 debut An 424 to craft an inviting, earthy sound world that's wholly their own. In the UK press, amidst something of a “green wave," there is a hunger for traditional Iris...