Mary Wallopers Review: Feet and Pints Fly Amid the Furious Roar of the Crowd

Corn Exchange, Edinburgh: The six-piece Irish band kick off their biggest tour yet, turning grisly old stories into sharp political energy and sawdust. You rarely see the crowd surfing during folk songs, let alone songs about hired killers who targeted priests in the early 1700s. But at a Mary Wallopers show, the Irish band whose passionate fans ...

It's not often you see a crowd surfing during folk songs, let alone songs about hired killers targeting priests in the early 1700s. But that's the case at a show by the Mary Wallopers, the Irish commercial group who have a passionate following of their controversial folk groups.

Legs and pints fly as a six-piece, playing banjo and tin whistle, on Seán na Sagart, a new song that turns an old horror story into a knee-jerk tale. By the breathtaking conclusion, the killer is dead and his victims and clients alike take it from the neck of the group. "You can't trust the clergy with their sacred bits / And no god will thank you for working with the Brits," singer Charles Handy grins, tasting the punchline.

According to founding members Charles and Andrew Handy, the Dundalk band are embarking on their biggest ever tour in honor of third album Paddywhackery - a record that sees the band back in good health and facing criticism that it's "too Irish or whatever".

The new material is often extremely fast-paced, with politics and humor both heavily embedded. Frenzied single The Big Mixer has short lyrics about greasing the machines of capitalism, while the hedonistic Club Kit Kat sounds like a hangover before the end of the night, with sour vocal harmonies and Catriona Gribben's amazing, whistling accordion.

But the group can also keep the room silent. "Someone put a border in Ireland," says Andrew Mordepenha before Spurs. A serious version of the folk song Smuggling the Tin, sung over a buzzing drone of O'Connor's Finnish pipes. The theme song Landlord’s Demise is equally haunting. A strange slow march was performed as Andrew beat the bodran as the crowd clapped and stamped. "Is there a landlord here tonight?" Charles shouts, scanning the room. "Damn… good!"

Closing on Frost Is All Over, a nearly 300-year-old jig, they give the song an almost chunky feel: strobes shooting, hands in the air. Wallopers make it a point to keep people connected to their spiky traditions, whether they like it or not.