The Mary Wallopers

Dundalk, the long way round

The band formed in 2019 in Dundalk, County Louth, built around brothers Charles and Andrew Hendy with Seán McKenna. Before any of that there was the internet: in 2020 the Hendys went viral with a satire of anti-5G protesters, which is a slightly strange entry point for a group whose working material runs back through the Irish ballad tradition to the eighteenth century.

What turned the joke into a career was the pandemic. With venues shut, the band put out livestreamed sessions from home — a format that gave them an audience before they had a record, and gave the audience a fixed idea of what a Mary Wallopers performance is: close quarters, no ceremony, songs introduced and then flattened. The Skinny, reviewing the new album, framed the whole arc as a move from pandemic-era livestreamers to arena performers, which is accurate down to the venue names on the current itinerary.

The reference points critics reach for are The Pogues, The Dubliners and Lankum, and the band have been labelled Irish trad punks often enough that the description has stuck. They are more interested in the material than the label. Charles Hendy has argued that folk music historically carried serious social and political weight and has only recently been mistaken for soft entertainment.

Three albums, and an EP that came back

The debut EP, A Mouthful of the Mary Wallopers, appeared in 2019 and contained the versions of 'Cod Liver Oil and the Orange Juice' and 'As I Roved Out' that first circulated widely. It got its first vinyl pressing on Record Store Day, 18 April 2026 — a limited 10-inch run of a thousand copies — and charted on the Official Scottish Albums Chart at number 44 on 30 April 2026, seven years after the fact.

The self-titled debut album followed in 2022, entering the Official Charts on 10 November that year: number 68 on sales, number 30 in Scotland, number three on the Official Folk Albums Chart. Irish Rock N Roll arrived on 13 October 2023 and did considerably better, entering on 26 October at number 42 on the Official Albums Chart, number two in Scotland and number one on the folk chart. It mixed traditional repertoire with a handful of originals — 'The Idler', 'Vultures of Christmas', 'Gates of Heaven'.

The band have stayed on their own imprint, BC Records, through all of it. Hendy has said major labels came asking and were turned down on the grounds that the band would have ended up sounding like someone else's idea of them.

Paddywhackery, and the word on the cover

The third album was announced on 4 June 2026 alongside the single 'Crowns of England', with tickets for the accompanying tour going on sale at 10am on 12 June. Paddywhackery came out on 18 September 2026, recorded over roughly two weeks in Liverpool with James Skelly of The Coral producing. The brief was speed rather than polish: Hendy described the sessions as capturing a moment instead of chasing perfection, with the aim of keeping the looseness while tightening what the six players do against each other.

The title is a reclaimed insult. As Hendy has explained it, paddywhackery is an Irish term for something that is too Irish — shorthand for the commercialised, export-grade version of the culture. The Hendys' reasoning for taking it was blunter: if people were going to call them that regardless, they might as well put it on the sleeve, and a record made only of serious songs sterilises itself.

The eleven tracks run from 'Crowns of England', which looks at England in 2026 from an outsider's position and nods towards The Clash, to 'Seán na Sagart', which sets the story of an eighteenth-century priest hunter of the Penal era to something you can jump to. 'The Juice' puts Andrew Hendy on lead vocal over drink and anti-establishment grievance. 'Landlord's Demise' strips back to voice, tin whistle and bodhrán and lines up the historical Irish landlord with the people letting flats now. 'The Big Mixer' handles corporate indifference to working people, and 'Kit Kat Club' goes to Berlin. 'Smuggling the Tin' is the traditional one, played straight and, per Hot Press, unexpectedly sad.

Reception has been strong. Hot Press gave it nine out of ten on release day, singling out the chemistry of the reshaped line-up. The Skinny gave it five stars and called out Finnian O'Connor's whistle and uilleann pipe work in particular. It entered the charts on 1 October 2026 at number 50 on the Official Albums Chart, number five in Scotland and number one on the folk chart.

Portsmouth, a flag, and what it cost

In August 2025 the band's set at Victorious Festival in Portsmouth was cut short after they displayed a Palestinian flag on stage. The band filmed and posted the aftermath. Several other acts on the bill then withdrew in protest, and the episode became the most widely reported thing the band had been involved in.

They had not arrived at that position suddenly. Opposition to the far right and support for Palestinian liberation have been part of their public footing for years, and the material on Paddywhackery about landlords and corporate greed is the same argument in domestic form. The episode is worth noting mainly because it establishes the stakes: this is a band whose politics have already cost them stage time.

Where they stand, October 2026

The line-up that made Paddywhackery is not the one that made the first two records. Seamas Hyland left in late 2023 and Seán McKenna, there from the start, departed in March 2025 to work on his own material. The current six are the Hendy brothers, Róisín Barrett on bass, Ken Mooney on drums, Finnian O'Connor on whistles and uilleann pipes, and Catriona Ní Ghribín on accordion and whatever else is needed, who joined in 2026.

The tour behind the album is billed as their largest to date and began at Edinburgh Corn Exchange on 13 October 2026, followed by Newcastle O2 City Hall on the 14th, Cardiff University's Great Hall on the 16th and the Brighton Centre on the 17th. The rest of October takes in Sheffield on the 19th, Cambridge Corn Exchange on the 20th, Liverpool on the 22nd, Manchester on the 23rd, Nottingham on the 26th, Leeds on the 27th, Birmingham on the 29th and London on the 30th. Two arena dates close the year: Dublin's 3Arena on 10 December and Glasgow's OVO Hydro on 19 December.

Beyond that, North America is set for 2027, including Toronto's History venue in March, with a return to Australia and a first set of New Zealand shows also planned for that year. For a band whose first audience watched them through a laptop, the 3Arena booking is the clearest measure of the distance covered since 2020.