Two minutes into “The Juice,” a standout from the Mary Wallopers’ third album Paddywhackery, Andrew Hendy delivers a manifesto: “Dance to your daddy, and rosin the bow/ This is Irish rock’n’roll.” The line namechecks two old Irish trad songs, and recontextualizes them in the world the Mary Wallopers have spent the 2020s building, one where the long history of Irish folk is not a curiosity or an academic exercise, but a vital and living form of defiance. As soon as Hendy delivers the line, the band lights into an extended, intensifying instrumental passage proving that jigs and reels can, in fact, rip.
Anyone who’s been to Ireland and come across a raucous session in a pub knows that already. But in their career thus far, the Mary Wallopers…

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