Gig review: Andy Irvine

Published on Tuesday 23 June 2009 19:48

**** STIRLING FOLK CLUB

THE co-founder of such landmark line-ups as Sweeney's Men, Planxty, Mosaic and Patrick Street, renowned also for his seminal collaborations with Paul Brady and Davy Spillane, Andy Irvine remains the most down-to-earth of Irish music legends.

At least half the dates on his current UK tour are in folk clubs, exemplifying the small-scale, solo-troubadour route to which he's always returned throughout his nearly 50-year career. The sartorial sprucing-up of the folk scene in recent years may have passed him by (his baggy grey cardigan and unkempt hair on this occasion being decidedly of the old school), but his beautiful throaty voice, with its sweetly forlorn tone and delicate ornamentation, is remarkably little changed.

His reputation derives equally from his pioneering prowess as an instrumentalist, especially on the bouzouki – originally introduced to Irish music by fellow Sweeney's Man Johnny Moynihan but which Irvine has made particularly his own, here switching between three different models of various shapes and sizes. His custom tunings and fleet-fingered picking, which helped Planxty break new ground in integrating songs with tunes, once again stood out as models of that subtle craft, while the original songwriting that's long been another key asset – deftly borrowing and adapting traditional ballad idioms – was represented by material as diverse as the comically reminiscent O'Donoghue's and a wonderfully dramatic setting of Alfred Noyes's poem The Highwayman.