Celtophilia

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Artist: Terry Griffith
CD: Songs From The Pub

This CD was presented to me as a collection of recordings for folks that wanted to hear something very akin to what Terry’s pub show is like. I’ll tell you a secret: I love this sort of live music, but don’t get to hear nearly enough of it, so this CD might as well have been created for me personally. While I do enjoy the complicated, multi-layered sounds of modern music from time to time, I can be perfectly happy to hear nothing but a guy and his guitar just doing what they do best. That’s exactly what Songs From The Pub is about, and it delivers in a massive way. Now, the big challenge is going to be getting over to Pittsburgh to see Terry perform live.

One of the things I love about getting to listen to traditional Celtic music is hearing how different people will take a trad song and make it their own. In Terry Griffith’s renditions of several Celtic standards, what I hear the most is a real passion and understanding for the music and the lyrics. Listening to Black Velvet Band on this CD is like hearing it for the first time, and actually feeling the bitterness and frustration of a man being transported halfway around the world. “The Town I Loved So Well” puts on an equally raw and passionate display, and this being one of my all-time favorite Irish songs, instantly becomes my favorite on this CD.

Sometimes I have a problem that I don’t like to talk about… no, not THAT. It has to do with reviewing CDs. While it’s all well and good for me to claim that “The Town I Loved So Well” is my favorite track on “Songs From The Pub,” the simple fact is that it ignores the fact that there are no less than a dozen tracks on this CD that could easily rank up with the best Irish tunes I’ve ever heard. Several of them I’m not entirely familiar with, but they’re rebellious, or lonely, or emotional, or various perfect combinations of those three.

Do yourself a favor, head over to CDBaby and buy this CD, look Terry up any and everywhere you can find him playing, and go see him live. If you want more information, you can find it at www.pittsburghirish.org/griffith

Slainte,

Mike

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 at 9:49 pm and is filed under All Reviews, Contemporary Celtic Reviews, Traditional Celtic Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.