With the onset of a new month I thought it might be time to check out some more of the best in Irish music. Not rock by any means --- but then, I never said all the albums featured in “The Very Best of Irish”
would be! --- it's an essential album indeed, by one of Ireland's favourite and best-loved sons, the inimitable Christy Moore.
Ordinary man --- Christy Moore --- 1985 (Walker)
Christy has long been acknowledged as one of the best ever songwriters and musicians the Irish folk scene has ever produced, and his output ranges from out-and-out traditional, folk and some blues influences to rockier material and some gorgeous ballads, including the superlative Jimmy McCarthy song, “Ride on”. Some of his songs are satirical, some sharply so. His song “Lisdoonvarna”, written about the Irish music festival that takes place there annually, is just good fun, as is “Don't forget your shovel”, but he can write some very cutting stuff too. This album opens with “Sweet music roll on”, a lovely little trad-type ballad on acoustic guitar with oileann pipes backing. “Delerium tremens” is a hilarious but very serious little ditty, ostensibly about the “D.T's”, the withdrawal symptoms from alcohol addition, but features many references to Irish polticians, religion and other Irish figures too. Most of the lyric will probably be incomprehensible to anyone not Irish, but it's a great little song, carried on acoustic guitar and bodhran.
Christy tends to sing a lot of his material almost
sotto voce, in a manner somewhat similar to John Martyn: he seldom raises his voice and you often have to strain to hear him, but his singing is the better for this. The standout track on the album breaks this habit, as Christy snarls out the title track, a sharp indictment of the plight of the workingman, when he snaps
”The owner says he's sad/ To see things have gone so bad/ But the captains of industry/ Won't let him loose/ He still drives a car/ Smokes a big cigar/ He still takes his family on a cruise!” It's a mid-paced ballad, with great guitar and some nice steel pedal guitar too, tom-toms keeping the percussion beat.
Most of the album is simple acoustic guitar with minimal percussion, some banjo and the odd keyboard flourish, the oileann pipes adding some colour as well as harmonica and maybe fiddles, hard to say and I have no instrumentation listing. But it's very, very Irish and very, very Christy. “The reel in the flickering light” opens on mournful keys and banjo or mandolin, features some lovely piano too, then Christy's guitar takes over and he returns to the normal way of singing for him, which is almost that of a man practicing alone in a room. This is part of Christy's charm: there are no airs or graces about the man. He plays on stage as he would at home alone, or on his records, and he's as honest and unassuming a man as you're ever likely to meet.
Another ballad then in “The Diamandtina drover”, and there's another instrument to add in: the accordion. Not normally one of my favourites, but it works very well here. “Blantyre explosion” opens with sounds of rain and thunder, and settles into another laidback ballad about a mining disaster in Scotland. “Hard cases” is another little jaunty tune, in something the style of “Delerium tremens” but a little slower, and a
lot of accordion, while “Continental ceili” (pronounced “kay-lee”) recalls his satirical “Don't forget your shovel”, another jaunty, pleasant little ditty just celebrating the Irish traditional way of life (a ceili is an Irish dance with traditional music), and “St. Brendan's voyage” depicts the journey of the Irish Saint Brendan the Navigator with a typical Christy Moore slant as he asks [i]”Is it right or left/ For Gibraltar?/ What tack do I take/ For Mizzenhead/ I'd love to settle down/ Near Bantry Harbour/ Saint Brendan to his albatross/ He said.” Great stuff!
The album was supposed to have included a song written by Christy commemorating the forty-eight young people killed in one of Ireland's worst accidents, the fire at the Stardust nightclub in 1981, but legal complications prevented him from adding it, and so instead, where “They never came home” should have been, we have “Another song is born”, which itself alludes to why songs are written, a direct attack at the powers that stopped him releasing “They never came home”, which was sharply critical of the Irish government for their treatment of the disaster and its aftermath, as well as the Butterleys, the owners of the nightclub, who themselves had strong ties to the party in power, Fianna Fail.
The album closes on the lovely “Quiet desperation”, featuring ex-Clannad member and solo artist Enya on backing vocals and keyboards. It's another lonely ballad, fragile and beautiful, perfectly crafted and delivered with gorgeous mandolin accompaniment from Donal Lunny, and it brings down the curtain on a fine album by a national Irish treasure.
TRACKLISTING
1. Sweet music roll on
2. Delerium tremens
3. Ordinary man
4. Matty
5. The reel in the flickering light
6. The Diamondtina drover
7. Blantrye explosion
8. Hard cases
9. Continental ceili
10. St. Brendan's voyage
11. Another song is born
12. Quiet desperation
Suggested further listening: “Ride on”, “Voyage”, “H Block”, “The time has come”, “Smoke and strong whiskey”, “Unfinished revolution”, “Traveller”