Artist.......: VA
Album........: The Rough Guide To Irish Folk
Label........: Rough Guides
Genre........: Folk
Catnr........: RGNET1226CD
source.......: CDDA
rip.date.....: Oct-27-2009
str.date.....: Jun-30-2009
quality......: VBR/44,1Hz/Joint-Stereo
Url..........: www.worldmusic.net
track title time
cd1
01. Seamie O'dowd - Crooked Jack 03:58
02. Roisin Elsafty - Pota Mor Fatai 02:57
03. Nollaig Casey, Arty McGlynn, Chris Newman 03:17
and Maire ni Chathasaigh - The Yellow Barber,
04. Patrick Street - Rich Irish Lady 05:07
05. Martin Tourish and Luke Ward - Tripin' 04:55
06. Karan Casey - Town of Athlone 02:50
07. Robbie O'Connell - Flower of Kilkenny 03:55
08. Four Men and a dog - Dan Murphy's Tom 04:14
Barrett's Tarmon's Cross Upperchurch Polka
09. Eamon Doorley Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh Julie 04:08
Fowlis Ross Martin - Beauty Deas an Oileain
10. Con O Drisceoil - The Spoons Murder 05:12
11. Cara Dillon - Jimmy Mo Mhφle Stor 03:57
12. Catherine McEvoy And Steve Cooney - 04:15
Elizabeth Kelly's Favourite Follow Me Down to
13. Niamh Parsons and Graham Dunne - The Men 03:58
That God Made Mad L'Entrada de l'Angustura
14. Brendan Mulholland Brendan Hendry and Paul 03:00
McSherry - High Road to Linton The Humours of
15. Rattle the Boards - St Patrick Was a 03:27
Gentleman
16. Sharon Shannon Frankie Gavin, Michael 04:35
McGoldrick and jim Murray - The Lochaber Badge
17. Sean Tyrrell - Rising of the Moon 03:33
cd2
01. Karan Casey - Love Is Pleasing 04:59
02. Karan Casey - Dunlavin Green 04:35
03. Karan Casey - Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye 04:23
04. Karan Casey - Black Is the Colour 05:03
05. Karan Casey - Town of Athlone 02:52
06. Karan Casey - Maidin Luan Chincφse 04:22
07. Karan Casey - The Fiddle and the Drum 04:39
08. Karan Casey - Erin's Lovely Home 05:39
09. Karan Casey - Ae Fond Kiss 04:07
10. Karan Casey - I Once Loved a Lass 05:21
Runtime 113:18 min
Size 125,10 MB
Release Notes:
I've barely touched on the Rough Guides this year,
but it's worth noticing that World Music Network
has started packaging them with bonus albums. Our
favourite source CD from among the top artists
featured on this collection, they say. The first
edition of Rough Guide to Irish Folk came out in
1996, the label's early days. Today its repertoire
sounds limited. In this new edition, their favorite
source CD is Karan Casey's 2008 disc, Ships in the
Forest. Casey used to sing with the American Irish
group Solas before she shifted to a solo career in
the 1990s. Ships in the Forest features her sweet
tweet accompanied by a guitar and a few other
instruments. The instruments are deliberately
minimal. On one of the tracks she sings alone and
her voice shoots out like flocks of butterflies.
Ships is pretty, but after listening to the
compilation I wished they had given us something
else. Specifically, I wished they'd given us Con O
Drisceoil's The Spoons Murder and Other Mysteries.
The Spoons Murder, included here, is a humourous
poem, half-spoken half-sung, dealing with a
musician's righteous strangling of a man who
interrupts his group's session by playing spoons.
As I listened to it, it occurred to me that what I
was hearing was a modern version of the bardic glam
dicenn, or satire, the bringing down of curses on
the poet's enemies, in this case unmusical people
who barge into pub sessions and make nuisances of
themselves.
There's nothing else on the compilation like it. In
fact there's nothing on the compilation that's
completely like anything else on the compilation.
Each track adds a new idea to the pile: an instance
of flash accordion, (Martin Tourish in Tripin'), a
pair of slip jigs on flute and guitar (Elizabeth
Kelly's Favourite / Follow Me Down to Limerick with
Catherine McEvoy on flute and Steve Cooney on
guitar), a bolting, roaring singalong from South
Tipperary's Rattle the Boards (St Patrick Was a
Gentleman), and a singalong in a more sentimental
key from Robbie O'Connell. O'Connell is nephew to
all three members of The Clancy Brothers, a
mid-century group whose albums formed part of a
wave of Irish trad nostalgia that floated across
the US and other parts of the Anglo world during
the 1960s and onward into the æ70s, æ80s' and æ90s,
which was when my expat neighbours liked to get
howling maudlin drunk to When You And I Were Young
Maggie at three in the morning four times a week.
O'Connell follows the guiding star of his uncles
and sings The Flower of Kilkenney in a malty
shamrock voice.
Then there are polkas, fiddlers, the larklike
Gaelic of Roisin Elsafty (whose album I also would
have taken over Karan Casey's), a song about the
Irish battalion that fought for the Mexicans during
the 1846 war with the US, an example of Davy
Spillane's atmospheric whistle, a guest appearance
by Scotland's Julie Fowlis (lending a hand to
Gaelic-singing friends across the water), and other
interesting things. The musicians are studio-bound.
Niamh Parsons might be singing about something that
happened in 1846, and Beauty Deas An Oileain
recounts a boat race in 1880, but none of the
recordings are more than a few years old. And they
sound new, cleanly done. The older style of
O'Connell's song throws this into relief. Put a
different accent on Cara Dillon and her Jimmy Mo
Mhile Stor could be an American country music track
recorded yesterday. With this Rough Guide Geoff
Willis, the compiler, must have been aiming to put
together a concise round-up of living musicians who
show their own fidelity to established styles. This
comes off pretty well. He keeps his hands on the
past and the present. The past isn't
over-sentimentalised and the present isn't too
Enya-sanitised, just polished enough that the yawl
of Rattle the Boards doing St Patrick Was a
Gentleman is welcome when it arrives. Willis'
playlist moves around as if he had no distinct
plan, as if he sat down and shuffled the order
until he sensed, by musical instinct, that the
tracks felt natural together. It's an organic
arrangement that never gets in the way of the
listener. A tidy piece of work.
by Deanne Sole