On the edge of genteel Tunbridge Wells, amid the rolling green hills and woods of Eridge Park, one band have instigated the first and only mosh pit moment during the entirety of Black Deer Festival weekend. Like the pied piper himself, musician Aidan Callaghan whistles a tune while his bandmate, Sam MacMillan, tears it up on the accordion and singer Daniel Harkins roars about his girl’s “Witchy Emerald Eyes”. One fan waves his crutches in the air enthusiastically. As they exit the stage, the audience bellows for more. Another first: the band return for a rousing encore and some more crutch-waving. It’s absolute carnage.
These roving Falkirk bairns are Brògeal (pronounced “Bro-gale”), a Scottish five-piece placing their proud heritage at the forefront of an emerging new rock scene. Significantly, they are a thrilling and important addition to a fresh wave of bands pushing back against the industry’s fixation on solo pop acts. In 2023, only four new songs by groups made it into the official Top 100 singles chart, which was otherwise dominated by pop kings and queens along with a handful of oldies by Wham!, Fleetwood Mac and The Killers. “The industry has been down on bands for a while,” Harkins says, alluding to the way it appears to regard bands as a costlier and more demanding enterprise than a solo act. Earnings have to be split an additional three, four or five ways; record labels are also concerned that a squabble between band members could bring everything crashing down.
Ahead of Oasis’s hugely anticipated 2025 reunion, though, this could all be about to change. Not that Brògeal are in a hurry to sign to a major, or otherwise fall in line with a smattering of media darlings such as IDLES or The Last Dinner Party. “A lot of the bands around are performative, it’s pure poser stuff,” Harkins sniffs. Their own taste is wide-ranging but tends towards the rebellious, be it The Pogues’ spitting fusion of Irish folk and English punk, or The Dubliners’ satirical and politically potent tunes.
They’re giddy because they’ve just been booked to open for Scottish trio The View, who Harkins worshipped as a teenager. For him, that band’s 2007 single “Same Jeans” – delivered in frontman Kyle Falconer’s light Dundee burr – stood apart from the rabble of English bands such as The Klaxons and The Kooks that dominated the scene at the time. One thing they’re intent on avoiding is any anglicisation of their sound: “I feel very strongly about my country and its culture, and so it’d feel like a cop-out trying to copy English bands,” Callaghan says. That’s not to the detriment of England, he clarifies: “We love playing here – I just don’t believe that there’s a single ‘British’ culture, and even if there was, I would reject it.”
“I’m dead influenced by [The View] – that idea of singing in your own accent about getting f***ed up in your hometown,” Harkins adds, while his bandmate pauses to roll a cigarette. “And I think the older generation have this idea that we’re all addicted to our phones and we don’t go out and have fun,” he continues. “Which isn’t true, so it’s nice to sing about that in songs.”
In person and onstage, Brògeal are a much-needed blast of fresh air in a scene still in thrall to angsty singer-songwriters, and have already achieved a following despite having yet to release an album. Just a few months ago, they opened a stadium show for Scottish superstar Paolo Nutini in Limerick. Another famous fan is Line of Duty actor Martin Compston, who ended up partying with the band until 4am in March, after watching them headline a sold-out King Tuts in Glasgow. It’s no surprise he was impressed – Brògeal live is like bottled lightning, their prodigious musicianship combining with their riveting onstage chemistry.
Their uninhibited style makes sense when you learn how they got their name. Callaghan’s grandparents would tell him stories of the clans known as Brògeal who marauded their way from town to town until winter set in, when they’d resort to trading songs for food and shelter (and drink). So “Brògeal” is apt – the band are a musical tornado encompassing Gaelic folk, punk and the Noughties indie they grew up on, channelled through the irrepressible spirit of Shane MacGowan.
He and Harkins first met as teenagers on the bus to a Celtic game, and after bonding over their shared musical tastes, started their first band, Shiva. “We were s***, but we were young and we were keen, so we were,” Harkins tells me. Around a year later, they switched to become a folk trio with MacMillan, doing “wee folk tunes… diddly-ay melodies, you know?” By the time the pandemic was over, they’d enlisted drummer Luke Mortimer and bassist Euan Mundie – their early songs include the breathless “You’ll Be Mine”, with its jaunty accordion riff, and “Man Accused of Murder”, a bitter tale in which the narrator emulates MacGowan’s drink-sodden dreamer in “Fairytale of New York”.
Harkins and Callaghan are currently sitting in a small courtyard post-soundcheck for a London gig – three years to the day since Brògeal’s first gig in Glasgow. Their recent single “Girl From NYC” exemplifies their sound, marrying the band’s strong feelings of local pride with their youthful rowdiness. To the casual listener, it’s a classic indie anthem (albeit one with Celtic melodies, banjo-noodling and the honk of the accordion) about an outsider causing a stir in a small town. Listen more closely, however, and it’s a withering criticism of both gentrification and the Thatcherite economics that had sent Falkirk slipping into anonymity by the late Eighties. Harkins was inspired to write the song after his beloved pub Rialto – along with another, The Star – closed down. “There are loads of towns that are suffering,” he says. “Shutters all along the high street and no investment.”
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“A lot of our songs are wee stories about Falkirk,” Callaghan offers. For him, the Scottish referendum in 2014 had a profound impact on his sense of identity which now informs his songwriting: “It really got me engaged in politics and gave me more of a sense of where I come from.” Where Harkins is a bit of a Jack the Lad, with an easy charm likely honed from pulling pints at the Rialto, Callaghan is more measured, although he matches his friend’s boisterous energy onstage. Despite their roving, their accents remain delightfully strong – occasionally they speak over one another so the burring blurs into one. They’re still suffering slightly from a late-night karaoke session – Harkins went with his signature rendition of “Build Me Up Buttercup”… “I tried ‘Uptown Girl’ but it doesn’t suit my voice,” he says.
Fortunately, their own songs do. Their latest, self-titled EP, released in May this year, opens with, “Roving Falkirk Bairn”, on which Callaghan sings a capella: “I’ve sailed across the Hudson wide, the Thames, the Seine, the Rhine/ And though they are all wonderful, there’s none that is so fine/ As the beautiful Carron water that flows so wide and free/ From Falkirk to Grangemouth town and beyond to the North Sea.” He first heard the song performed by a local musician, Joe Allison, and was so gobsmacked by the melody he wrote down his own lyrics. “It’s really nice to sing it when you’re elsewhere in the world – it’s a proper Scottish slap in the face.” What do they find themselves writing about the most? “Drinking,” Harkins suggests. “And getting f***ed up.”
That comment belies the melancholic strain you can sometimes detect in their sound. “Hill is High”, also on the EP, is a gentler account of growing up in “a place you can call a Northern town”. The EP closes on “Fly Away”, one of their best songs, about fleeing that hometown with a trail of dust in their wake. It opens with a lone electric guitar line, surging forwards like their River Carron with a jangling acoustic riff, as Harkins calls: “Come on baby, yeah we’ve got to go/ You got a nasty habit and you’ve let it show/ Jump into the Cadillac and go/ And disappear.”
They’re writing again now, planning for an “even more ramshackle” follow-up to their 2024 EP – there might be a debut album next year. Harkins is working on some post-breakup tunes: “It was OK, but [the relationship] was a big part of my life – six years,” he says. “It’s no f***ing Adele, like, but there’s a lot going on.” Another one, “Tuesday Paper Club”, which they’ve been playing at live shows, is about “old bastards who think young people are stupid”. If Brògeal are anything to go by, the kids are most definitely alright.
Brògeal headline the Shacklewell Arms for The Great Escape / First Fifty, in partnership with The Independent, on Wednesday 13 November
