Released: 2024
You’ll rarely hear the word majestic used in conjunction with Kneecap; the grime trio from West Belfast are mostly a proxy for more hedonistic things, although they also have a sense of purpose which has helped them sustain a career that, if you abstract the idea from the execution, seems far fetched even for the 2020’s.
Their debut album Fine Art was designed to piss a lot of the right people off, less directly satirical than their early track Get Your Brits Out, but with Moglaí Bap and Mo Chara still having it large at the establishment’s expense.
Opener 3CAG – not to be confused with the old tune of the same name – was admittedly an extreme outlier compared to the album’s chaotic whole. Featuring the vocals of Lankum’s Radie Peat, it’s use in montage form at the beginning of the group’s live set was equally no accident, a scene setting calm before the storm. Peat appears beamed in from another Celtic world; sounding like Clannad on very good Class A’s, the effect was strangely uplifting, the whole majestic episode music for kings and queens whose only decree was that everyone must be completely off their heads at all times.
The Voice Of Unreason 
1 Comment