Contemporary Irish folk group Lankum's 2023 album "False Lankum" has been named among the 50 best albums of the year by National Public Radio.
The group, which consists of brothers Ian and Daragh Lynch, Conor MacDiarmada, and Radie Peat, released their latest album in March to widespread critical acclaim.
False Lankum was nominated for the 2023 Mercury Prize after their last album "The Livelong Day" scooped the RTÉ Choice Music Prize Irish Album of the Year in 2019.
Listing False Lankum among the top 50 albums of the year, NPR described Lankum as "a gift from the pagan gods".
"Radie Peat, Cormac Mac Diarmada and the brothers Daragh and Ian Lynch have not only defied the odds of 2023; the foreboding foursome is on track to become one of the greatest groups of the 21st century," NPR's Otis Hart said in the recently-released rankings.
"False Lankum, their third award-winning album since 2017, takes their A24 update of Irish traditional music to unprecedented (read: Radiohead) levels. Who needs rock when you have the philosopher's stone?"
Formed in 2000, the group released two albums under the name Lynched, after Ian and Daragh's surname, before changing their name in 2016 to avoid associations with the practice of lynching.
In 2017, the group released the album "Between the Earth and the Sky", their first album under the name Lankum, and received a nomination for the RTÉ Choice Music Prize Irish Album of the Year.
Speaking after False Lankum was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize in 2023, the group said "it’s pretty crazy, considering where we started off twenty years ago as a joke band playing at parties and squats".
The group lost out on the prestigious award to British jazz quintet the Ezra Collective's album "Where I'm Meant to Be".
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