Madra Salach live in London: an unmissable live band with incredible power

Paul Banks stands with his hands leaning on top of his mic stand, looking out over the Electric Ballroom crowd.

It’s nearly the end of Madra Salach ’s first of two sold-out nights at the London venue – the Dublin band’s biggest shows to date – and a sustained drone eking out from Maxime Arnold’s harmonium indicates how they’re going to wrap things up.

Over the last 12 months or so, ‘The Man Who Seeks Pleasure’ has become their de facto set closer – a finale that seems to grow in intensity and emotion every time they play it.

READ MORE: Madra Salach are remoulding traditional Irish folk to their own blistering tune Tonight (October 13) is no different.

It’s as full of feeling in its quieter moments, when it’s just Banks and the drone commanding the room, or in the spaces in between, as when the layers build to dramatic heights.

As Banks’ vocals grow from gentle intonation to affecting rasps, so too does the audience begin to join in.

This is a lightning-in-a-bottle kind of song – one with something almost magical to it in the way it can make your tear ducts fill up on demand, but feels like only the six-piece who wrote it could really harness the full extent of its power.

Madra Salach’s Paul Banks.

Credit: Cian Wood The Madra Salach live experience might typically end with this eruption of emotion, but everything that comes before more than lives up to the finish, too.

The band’s dizzying ascension has been propelled by their gigs, and for good reason – of the current crop of new bands on the scene, they are far and away one of the most captivating.

There’s rarely a note in their set that you can’t feel, whether delivered via the voice of Banks (an incredibly expressive vocalist) or the physicality of the band’s performance.

During an opening cover of Ewan McColl’s ‘The Tunnel Tigers’, the original given a healthy dose of punk grit, multi-instrumentalist Jack Martin’s arms slicing downwards through the air between attacking the keys of his synths.

Continuing the folk tradition of passing down stories through generations, tonight’s setlist features a handful of covers alongside ‘The Tunnel Tigers’ – some that have become a part of the Madra Salach story, and some fresh reworkings, too.

Banks introduces each with context, history and humour.