-planxty - - Planxty 1973.zip-

This was the opposite of the lush, orchestrated “Celtic” sound that would dominate decades later. The album is dry, close-miked, and aggressive. You can hear the squeak of O’Flynn’s pipe bag. You can hear the fret noise of Irvine’s bouzouki. The dynamics are sudden: a furious reel like “The Merry Blacksmith” explodes out of silence with a raw, physical attack. This production aesthetic became known as the “Glendalough sound” (after the studio’s location), and it taught a generation that traditional music could be as visceral as punk rock. In fact, in 1973, Planxty was punk before punk. To listen to Planxty today is to hear the DNA of nearly every subsequent Irish folk act. The Pogues took their rhythmic aggression. Clannad took the ethereal piping. The Bothy Band (formed by Lunny and O’Flynn after Planxty’s first split) took the virtuosity. Even U2’s “October” and “The Unforgettable Fire” owe a debt to this album’s sense of landscape as a character.

But the true shock is the political material. “Arthur McBride” is a furious anti-recruiting song from the Napoleonic era, delivered with a jaunty, almost murderous cheerfulness. Moore and Irvine’s vocal duet turns a tale of conscription into a gleeful fantasy of beating up a British sergeant. In the context of the early Troubles in Northern Ireland (the album was recorded just a year after Bloody Sunday), this was not archival—it was live ammunition. -Planxty - Planxty 1973.zip-

In the winter of 1973, the Irish folk group Planxty released their self-titled debut album. To a casual listener, it might have sounded like a relic: the mournful uilleann pipes, the jig of the bodhrán, the lonesome whistle. But beneath the traditional veneer, Planxty was a radical document. It was not a preservation project but a declaration of war—a sonic detonation that shattered the twee stereotypes of “Irish music” as a parlour entertainment for tourists. With this album, four young men—Christy Moore, Dónal Lunny, Andy Irvine, and Liam O’Flynn—did not merely revive Irish folk music; they reinvented it for a nation coming to terms with its own fractured identity. The Architecture of the Quartet The genius of Planxty lies first in its texture. Before Planxty, the standard bearer for Irish folk was either the solo ballad singer (like the young Bob Dylan’s hero, Dominic Behan) or the showband’s saccharine arrangement. The Clancy Brothers had brought the pub session to Carnegie Hall, but their sound was rowdy, guitar-driven, and linear. This was the opposite of the lush, orchestrated