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28 April 2025 12:28 PM
By Nick Reilly
The tradition of Celtic music is burning brighter than ever in 2025. There’s the likes of Lankum who are delivering a doom-laden and beautiful twist on traditional folk, while The Mary Wallopers have become a party-starting sensation capable of tackling some of the UK and Ireland’s biggest rooms.
But when it comes to a band capable of injecting the modern scene with the punk spirit of legends like The Pogues, then Brògeal may well be it. Listen to songs like the rousing ‘You’ll Be Mine’ and you’ll see that the Falkirk four-piece – Aidan Callaghan (banjo, vocals), Daniel Harkins (guitar, vocals), Sam MacMillan (accordion), Euan Mundie (bass), and Luke Mortimer (drums) – are capable of cooking up absolute bangers that the late great Shane MacGowan would surely approve of.
At the same time, however, there’s a musical edge that separates them from the pack. The slow-burning euphoria of early release ‘Fly Away’ shows off a more conventional indie-tinged edge, while the emotional ‘Roving Falkirk Barin’ offers up a misty-eyed ode to the ever-present draw of home.
“We’re not just going for one thing. We’re comfortable to spread out in what we can do,” explains Callaghan.
Now, with one of their most exciting years so far, it feels like Brògeal could well on the path to doing something special.
Daniel: We started this band not long after going into COVID and we didn’t even know about bands like the Mary Wallopers, but we’re lucky in the sense that people are listening to us at a time when that revival is happening.
Aidan: It’s class. It’s not even so much folk music, but people are engaging more with regional culture, whether it be Scotland, England, Ireland or Wales. There’s our pal SexyTadhg and they sing Gaelic songs, but they’re in full drag with a full rock band! It’s like our cultures are coming back in a cool way and people are really exploring how far you can go with it other than just being an actual folk band.
Daniel: Me and Aidan used to be in a punk band, but it was a shitty high school punk band and we were into The Pogues because we met on the bus to Celtic games. Me and Aidan always got on because we had a common interest in music and we sort of both knew that we were into the music a lot more than we were into the football. That band ended and it was Sam who plays the accordion who just said ‘Do you want to start a band like The Pogues?’
Aidan: It’s really weird, because we had a weird gut feeling as soon as we first met up for the first time, honest to God, I was like, aye, we can do this. We know we’re not the biggest band in the world, well yet, but it’s the fact that none of us knew how to play our instruments traditionally. We picked them up and gave them a go, which has meant we were really excited with the fresh sound we’d been getting out and it’s always been a laugh. There’s never been a ‘oh why are we doing this’ moment. Even during COVID we thought it’s fine because when the world is ready, we’ll be ready. We’ve always believed in ourselves.
Daniel: I think also the fact that once we started to write songs together, it became clear that we were into punk and indie and it allowed us to be versatile. You can have a song that sounds like Oasis, but on the same album you can have a song that sounds like Irish/Scottish folk. We just find that very exciting, the range of music that we’re able to produce. We don’t limit ourselves.
Aidan: It’s really helped. We’ve been working on tunes where you’ve got your drinking songs, I suppose, and then some indie tunes. You can clump them together roughly and it’s a nice reflection of the fact that we’re not just going for one thing, we’re comfortable to spread out in what we can do. It’s a good thing to have done.
Daniel: We’re in our mid-twenties too so we’ve had to calm down too, so where he’d have drinking songs before, a lot of our upcoming songs are about the repercussions of that.
Daniel: I actually think it’s because you speak to bands from cities, but we’ve always been brought up like town boys and when you start going out in Glasgow, you start to realise, well, this is exciting, this is a big city. But you’ve always got this idea in the back of your head that the people there are very different to you and people that have been brought up in cities, they’ve got a different sort of mindset to us. We’re from a small town and have the mindset that we don’t deserve to be in London because of that. But it’s just imposter syndrome and it makes you want to scream and shout about your home more.
Aidan: We’re incredibly proud to be from Falkirk and it’s a shared experience we all have. And at the end of the day, man, nice wee stories are what people care about. We care about Falkirk and throughout the history of Scotland, anybody who’s come up, the Romans or the English, they had to come up through Falkirk. We live in a place that’s got an incredible local history and we want to write songs about things that take place in our everyday lives and a lot of this has been in Falkirk.
Daniel: Me and Aidan talk about Falkirk being romanticised, but there is a lot of nutters too. You can write songs about the wee guy with the vacant look in his eyes who wanders up the high road every day. It’s important for stories like that to be told from a historical perspective, because he’ll be gone and forgotten one day, but if we can slip him into a tune then that’s really important.
Aidan: Well I’d never let my mind run away because I do think a wee bit of that is a good thing and it keeps you on the ground. And I’m enjoying every minute because theoretically it could be over tomorrow. You won’t catch me going ‘I’m a fucking rock god’ and then getting sacked tomorrow! I think we need to keep it real until we’re millionaires and then we can start to be c***s about it! No, but it’s just mad and we’re so fortunate to be doing what we’re doing.
Daniel: But we do deserve it 100 percent, we had a cheekiness and confidence to it.
Aidan: We are the dog’s bollocks!
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