Brògeal

The rambunctious Celtic folk of The Pogues, the story-telling charm of The View, the lush pop harmonies of Teenage Fanclub, the jangly delicacy of the Smiths, the yearning of a classic Oasis B-side and a Scottish brogue as defiant as the Proclaimers… Brògeal have it all – and make it their own. A bubbling cultural cauldron set to boiling point, the sound overflows with accordion, banjo, bouzouki, mandolin and perky penny whistle, where ancient folk tradition meets an indie Gen Z sensibility and laughs, sings and dances in the face of 21st century darkness. The death of the swaggering good-time band has been greatly exaggerated. 

From small-town Falkirk in central Scotland the folk-punk-indie-pop five-piece have big ideas, with a reputation as one of the best live bands in Britain, their communal, sing-along, delirious anthems igniting mosh-pit madness throughout the UK, Ireland and beyond. Everybody loves them. 

“The thing about our music is that it transcends all age groups,” notes vocalist/songwriter/guitarist Daniel Harkins. “You’ve got 14-year-old boys with their mums, they’re all going mental, you've got old punks, middle-aged women, young adults, old people, everybody's digging it, you know? There's something for everybody because you've got your folky influences, The Pogues, with this indie edge and pop sensibilities.” 

Brògeal (pronounced Bro-gale) got here via the old-school, DIY route. Borne from a friendship on a bus – Daniel and fellow songwriter Aidan Callaghan (vocals, banjo) met on journeys to Celtic football games – they formed a typically ramshackle school punk band, Shiva, who were “shit”, but the passion remained. Traditional folk fans forever, loving The Dubliners and The Pogues, ideas for a folk band evolved, soon joined by Sam MacMillan who taught himself to play his grandad’s accordion. When Covid struck in 2020, more self-taught musicianship filled the void, learning their folky craft on curious olde instruments, two metres apart, in Daniel’s back garden under a leaky Asda gazebo. Emerging from Covid, two new recruits joined – local studio engineer Euan Mundie (bass) and Luke Mortimer (drums) – and the distinctive Brògeal sound took shape: fearlessly merging traditionally raucous Celtic folk with deft, harmonious songcraft, pop nous and the indie noughties energy they grew up on. 

“We never set out with a [musical] plan,” notes Daniel. “Whatever we bring to the band, no matter what genre, it always ends up sounding like a Brògeal song anyway.” 

They made their first EP for themselves, ‘Dirt and Daydreams’ (2023) released on their own winningly titled CraicDen label, followed by an eponymous EP in 2024 on Is Right Records, leading to a signing with revered independent label Play It Again Sam (PIAS, home to Nick Cave, The Hives, Cameron Winter). For the last 18 months they’ve toured relentlessly, throughout the UK and Ireland, gathering ecstatic fans, have supported Paolo Nutini, The Mary Wallopers and The Lathums, found fans in both 6 Music’s Huw Stephen and Line of Duty actor Martin Compston, been eulogised in Rolling Stone, the Independent, Clash, The New Cue, So Young and Dork. 

“We’ve always been kept busy and it just kind of got bigger and bigger at a really natural rate,” says Aidan. “It’s the stuff of dreams. You think, ‘Oh, that could never happen’, and we’re doing it!” 

“Aidan's being kind of humble there,” interjects Daniel. “Because we had the belief from the very start. That we’d be massive!” 

Their debut album, released this October, spectacularly fulfils the belief. Tuesday Paper Club showcases their limitless musical range, with lyrical themes of romance, heartache, booze, local nutters, nostalgia and loss, its artwork featuring a paper boy, Aidan’s wee brother Finn. The title is a withering, generational quip: Daniel once worked the day shift in Falkirk’s oldest pub, The Wheatsheaf (established 1779), “a total old man’s pub”, where most days three old fellers took up residency with the newspapers. “They wouldn’t talk to each other until they’d had about five pints,” says Daniel, and when talk did start, alongside the headlines, there would be disparaging remarks on the apparently “stupid” young. “So I just thought it would be really cheeky to write about them,” laughs Daniel, who wrote the lyrics there on a Tuesday. “Just talking about the mundanity of what they were up to while being so judgmental, you know?” 

The album’s recording location was also unique. Black Bay Studio sits on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland’s profoundly remote Outer Hebrides, a residential studio refurbished from a fish processing factory, overlooking a stunning bay. Here, the five slept alongside producer Richie Kennedy, the Irish Producer/Engineer/Mixer based in London (Libertines, Cardinals, Last Dinner Party, Interpol, Dua Lipa/Kylie, U2). 

“We took the recording outside,” says Aidan. “We’ve got the waves lapping, the sounds of the island and the record was marinaded in that all the way through.” 

It’s also steeped in Celtic passion. The opener is ‘Tuesday Paper Club’ itself, a statement-of-intent where Sam’s bouzouki sounds like a bagpipe, a party-hard, Pogues-y floor-thumper where the daytime pub-goers find “solace in the papers, solace in the booze…and when you get enough of the stout, move on to the wine!” The sparkling, jangly groove of ‘Vicar Street’ follows, a homage to their days at the Rialto pub in Falkirk, where Daniel worked for years and where, in the post-Covid musical wilderness, Brògeal created a pub night for local musicians (a night then relocated to Glasgow’s McChuills and still thriving today). “It’s a sentimental song,” says Daniel. ‘Friday On My Mind’, the first single released this May, is an irresistibly jaunty, yearning love song, while the thumpering indie-rock of ‘Lady Madonna’ is a fan favourite written in 2020. The guitar-pop charm of ‘Turn And Walk Away’ sees more romantic reflection on a disintegrating relationship while the gorgeous ‘Scarlett Red’ echoes early Noel Gallagher at his most wistful, Daniel’s most romantically tender song yet. “I’ll never find a better pal than you,” he sings, his heart dangling from his sleeve. “That's a very vulnerable love song,” he confesses. “Probably the only one I've got that's like that. We’re hoping that'll be the John Lewis Christmas advert!” ‘Dippin ‘n’ Divin’ is a 30 second spoken word interlude (from a poem Daniel had written; a born romantic he’s written poetry for years), while ‘One for the Ditch’ is a flailing Celtic-folk singalong, all fags, booze and going “for a pish”, Sam bursting into Scottish trad-folk caper ‘Mairi’s Wedding’, Aidan banjo blasting The Dubliners ‘Spanish Lady’ all amounting, as Aidan notes, to “micro carnage!” The accordion-led roustabout ‘Draw The Line’ is a portrait of Falkirk’s sketchy local characters, lyrically destined for either “the jail or in the ground”, ‘Racing Track’ is more rousing indie-rock while the beguiling beauty of ‘Apples and Leaves’, both written and emotively sung by Aidan, echoes the swooning atmosphere of the Smiths’ Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want. The jangling, heady rush of ‘Stuck Inside’, with its central lyric “we’re always bloody stuck inside” is no Covid reverie but a contemplation on the end of Daniel’s six-year relationship from school, the couple always at home, a spent force, Daniel drinking, always feeling, as the lyrics say, “rough…you’re too good for me baby”. 

‘Go Home To Your Bed’ then follows, a song as stunning as it’s unexpected. The album’s most emotionally affecting moment, it’s a haunting lament to loss and the comforting presence of a loved one beyond the grave, a human need as ancient as the Hebridean hills. Beginning with the plaintive lyric, “go home to your bed, bonnie laddie”, it features a spectral guest vocalist performance from Lewis-based singer Josie Duncan (who sings the first verse translated into Gaelic). It’s Aidan’s song, and Aidan’s story. 

“My father passed away when I was 13,” he explains. “Obviously that was kind of horrific. Um, so I was purely down in the dumps, grieving. And then I had the spookiest experience. I was lying in my bed and I had this pure feeling, like unbelievable calm. I could feel somebody sitting at the bottom of my bed. I was totally in a trance. Then I felt this hand on my forehead, clear as day. And I just took that to be my father. It was through my father that I've got all my mad Celtic shit going on, so I knew I wanted to do something for him. Me speaking to him, and him speaking to me, ‘Go home, go and lie down and rest’.” 

After that, there’s only one way to end this most dynamically diverse debut album. Like the most raucous song played at the most celebratory wake, ‘Lonesome Boatman’ brings the relief and the release, leaving us on a euphoric high. Since the early days of playing Celtic/Irish songs in “hellhole” local pubs, this has been Brògeal’s signature final song live, a blistering folk-punk rebel-song shindig guaranteeing a mosh-pit frenzy. 

“Everybody knows we're going to play it,” grins Daniel. “As soon as Aidan picks up the whistle, everybody goes mental before the first notes even begin. It just goes absolute Motorhead madness.” 

“It was intentional,” adds Aidan. “There’s ‘Go Home To Your Bed’, get everybody greetin’ (crying) and then that.” “I really think,” concludes Daniel, with some understatement, “that this album will make people feel things.” 

Brògeal thrum at the centre of a robust, Celtic folk revival, crowds across the UK and Ireland connecting to a traditional spirit of positive defiance in an ever-polarised, none-more-negative era. There’s an uprising going on. 

“Since the Scottish independence referendum [2014] and the 2016 Brexit referendum,” considers Aidan, “the right wing came up with all this patriotic British crap that they continue to try and impose on people in Scotland and in the north of Ireland. Artists naturally stand against that and rebel. But what we do is no’ against anybody, we’re people proud of where they're from in a nice way. We want to bring our music to the mainstream.” 

“Things come full circle,” decides Daniel. “The Pogues were a London Celtic revival thing, but it's been 40 years since that happened. And with the Britpop stuff it faded away. I feel like people are ready to take on that spirit again, in Scottish and Irish folk music, everyone's jumping on it and saying, ‘cool!’” 

So much for Generation Z being permanently depressed, apocalyptic and sober. “People have too many opinions on our generation,” says Daniel, sipping an afternoon Guinness. “Addicted to their phones, social media is evil, short attentions spans, all that. The people we hang about with are interested in living life to the full, you know? And making music and making art. It’s definitely coming back. We’re anything but miserable right now.” 

No wonder. Brògeal are not so much a breath of fresh air as a bracing gust of Caledonian spirit, set to propel around the planet as if carried on a prevailing wind. “The dream for us is just to see the world,” says Daniel. “And have an outlet to do that. If we can be big in Japan, then we're doing something right. That's the end goal: big in Japan!”  “We’ve met people that you'd never come across in any other way,” adds Aidan. “Not just cool industry people, punters. We just want to see and do everything. It’s not about fame and success. We just want to share the music, do the big gigs.” 

Then again… 

“We want to be the biggest and best band in the world!” he now declares. “But we also want to have a good time doing this. Because, in theory, it could be curtains tomorrow.” 

Brògeal: A proper band, for everyone, cheering up the world. The good times, finally, are back•