Song of the Day 8/25: The Mary Wallopers, “Frost Is All Over”

The Israel-Gaza War started with a massacre at a music festival, and nearly two years later the music festival business is still feeling the effects. Israel’s brutal response to the terrorist attack brought on widespread condemnation, and bands who have spoken out against it have faced censorship.

The Mary Wallopers, a punk-influenced Irish folk band – think the Pogues for a new generation – were the latest victims. Organizers of the Victorious Festival in Portsmouth, England (named for a historic warship docked there, the HMS Victory) pulled the plug on them Friday for decorating their stage with the Palestinian flag. The organizers, Superstruct Entertainment, offered a string of explanations, at one point claiming the festival has a “no flags” policy, purportedly for safety reasons. Nobody was buying that, and several other bands pulled out of the festival in protest.

This has been a particular problem in Great Britain, where Superstruct runs several festivals. The company was bought in 2024 by KKR, a private equity firm with investments in Israeli ventures on the West Bank and ties to weapons manufacturers and Big Oil. Citing the firm’s ties to genocide, dozens of artists are boycotting Superstruct events.

There’s more than a whiff of staged controversy to this latest chapter. The Mary Wallopers have been speaking out in support of Palestinians for years, so concert bookers had to know something of the sort was coming, just as the band knew who the event organizers were and apparently planned accordingly.

The publicity will certainly boost the band’s profile. I’d never heard of them until this weekend, probably because I don’t listen to a lot of traditional Irish music. Formed in 2019 by brothers Charles and Andrew Hendy, the Mary Wallopers hail from Dundalk on the Castletown River, just south of the border with Northern Ireland. They took their name from a boat they saw in the harbor there. This is their most-viewed song on YouTube.

Their most recent effort is this single, “The Juice,” released just a month ago.