Paul Brady - Hard Station

I watched a Planxty documentary on YouTube last week, which sent me down a Paul Brady rabbit hole.

I don’t know why I hadn’t done this earlier as I’ve long been a fan of his trad stuff. The live version of Arthur McBride is one of my favourite tunes. Such a unique voice and such an amazing guitarist.

So, turns out that down at the end of the rabbit hole was a discogs seller with two Irish Polydor pressings of two of his early eighties albums, going for a song. It’d be churlish not to

Hard Station really should be a much more famous album than it is. It’s choc-full of proper songs, folk-tinged rock delivered in a slightly over-marinaded eighties style, and Brady's open-tuned hybrid-picking guitar playing.

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Steeleye Span - Below The Salt

English folk, with a focus on the mediaeval, and everything on overdrive a bit. Gadzooks – it’s fucking great!

And...Gaudete.

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Vin Garbutt - Little Innocents

As someone who grew up listening to punk, I truly believed that it was the only music which eschewed soppy love songs in favour of social issues. Then I discovered folk.

If I described this 1983 album to you, thematically, you’ll see what I mean. It has a cover which is the painting called The Slaughter of the Innocents which shows children being massacred by troops, and has songs about American cultural imperialism, spina bifida and the rights of the disabled, domestic violence, homelessness/alcoholism, unemployment, pollution, and civil rights.

Suck my folky dick, Conflict.

Anyway, the album ends with a big, all encompassing, song about all the wrongs of the world. Think From The Cradle To The Grave which turns everything into a pro-life argument. Fuck. Got that wrong. Haven't been that wrong about a song since I thought Abortion by Black Uhuru was pro-choice!

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Steeleye Span - Parcel Of Rogues

An album which addresses the tension between the old and the new during industrialisation and does that by creating tension between old and new musical forms.

Someone really needed to reign in the guitarists during the recording of this. Oh, and they’ve brought the drummer back.

I’m a sucker for Hares On The Mountain, and this album contains my least favourite version yet.

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Steeleye Span - Ten Man Mop Or Mr Reservoir Butler Rides Again

I remember, years ago, I was driving home from work in a Mitsubishi Mirage with an unnecessarily loud stereo, playing a ripped CD of Steeleye Span tunes with no track listing. It struck me that musically, the song Gower Wassail, which kicks off this album, could be NoMeansNo, with its taut stabs. Think, It's Catching Up.

I’ve pondered this now and then over the intervening years, but have never known which particular Steeleye Span tune it was. Now I know.

This has made me want to listen to NoMeansNo.

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Steeleye Span - Please To See The King

When they recorded the first album, Steeleye Span all lived in the same house, like a proper band. This, rather predictably, ended in tears and bitter acrimony and a corporate re-structuring.

The most noticeable changes on this, the second album, are the absence of a drummer and the presence of the then emerging English folk ledge Martin Carthy, whose presence is immediately apparent.

I wouldn’t mind betting that Planxty were listening to this, pointing at the record player and exclaiming “That!”

I feel like I’m going to have to buy the next album now.

The sleeve of this album is a hessian effect. This sent me down a rabbit hole trying to remember which 90’s Scottish punk band released an album with a real hessian sleeve. Found it.

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Richard & Linda Thompson - First Light

This album was the Thompsons’ return from a three year sabbatical spent in Sufi communes, about which Linda was later quite scathing. The songs are along broadly spiritual themes, but you wouldn’t know it, because they’re so well-hidden. However, Richard’s songwriting style is always right there, front and centre.

It’s a good album, albeit a slow-burning one.

Linda's voice is great.

It has an interesting cast of players, including 70’s show-tune queen, Julie Covington, Andy Fairweather-Low from the Amen Corner and Maddy Prior from Steeleye Span, as well as the top session musicians of the day.

Today I learned: Richard Thompson was once in a band with Hugh Cornwell of the Stranglers.

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