After The Break

Planxty | Format: MP3 Download

Product Details

• Original Release Date: December 17, 2008
• Label: Tara Music Company Ltd.
• Copyright: 1979 Tara Music Company Ltd.
• Total Length: 48:03
• Genres:
• ASIN: B001O6ZNBU
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #117,272 Paid in MP3 Albums (See Top 100 Paid in MP3 Albums)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential Celtic Title, July 19, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: After the Break (Audio CD)

No other Planxty release comes close to this one in my mind for sheer intensity. The instrumental sets are some of the best ever recorded, with melody emphasis on Molloy's flute and O'Flynn's piping wonderfully complemented by Irvine, Lunny and Moore on mandolin, bouzouki and guitar. A very rich sound, with strong, thought out tune sets whose parts work excellently together. Those five instrumental sets alone make this one a must have, but there are also some great songs ('The Rambling Siuler' being my favorite). One of the best.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars good old stirring irish stuff, July 10, 2006

By 

Flight Risk (The Gypsy Moth) "Exiled Yankee" (usa) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: After the Break (Audio CD)

I have loved this album from its very first days. I can't tell you how much work got done early in my career because I had this going on in the background. There isn't a bad cut on the album. "The Good Ship Kangaroo" is so dancy and tuneful,with such good vocals, you can't help but sing along. "Rambling Boys Of Pleasure", which I have heard as a few other folk songs done to the same tune, is sweet and longing, a lament to the fickleness of youth and the lure of riches. "The Rambling Siuler" is sly and clever, a tribute to someone who will do anything to gain their heart's desire. All the instrumental pieces on the album are as sharp and crisp as any Planxty ever produced; especially notable is one that isn't even Irish, a Bulgarian dance piece called "Smeceno Horo" which I'm betting has something to it, played by these guys, that it doesn't have when played in Bulgaria. Donal Lunny seems to have made a special study of Eastern bouzouki music (well, yeah, since that's where the bouzouki is from) and he plays the socks off the thing. My favourite piece on the whole album, though, is "Pursuit of Farmer Michael Hayes"; I get sucked in every time, hiding in the weeds with the guy as he's hunted by the coppers for doing in the mean landlord that evicted him; I always feel like cheering when he safely stows away on a ship and makes it to America to start fresh. You know you shouldn't be on the guy's side, but you can't help yourself. One other song, "Bonny Light Horseman", is further proof through song that Napoleon was really a bad-news disaster any way you looked at him but particularly to his troops, who suffered in droves. Off the top of my head I can come up with at least half a dozen songs in a few seconds that deal with the misery he caused; this tune is told from the girl-at-home's point of view. All in all, this is a solid effort by, to my mind, the premier Irish band of this genre. It is a worthy addition to any folkie's library.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Surpasses the first generation of Planxty - easily, March 21, 2004

By 

mianfei - See all my reviews

This review is from: After the Break (Audio CD)

Following three albums that served to define the sound of traditional Irish folk in the middle 1970s, Planxty broke up in 1976, only to reform in 1979 at the height of the "punk revolution".

Whilst the "punk revolution" might have taken the spotlight away from "After The Break", there is no dount how much the album showed the second generation of Planxty to have developed as musicians. Whereas the songs on first-generation Planxty albums tended to be short but not sharp, leaving the players with too little room to express themselves, on "After The Break" the more opened-out arrangements serve the group perfectly, allowing them to develop sublime melodies and freeing Christy Moore's voice so that it sounded less rough and ready than on early albums.

"The Good Ship Kangaroo" was an amazingly tender opener perfectly expressing the fear inherent in sailing to Australia, and "The Pursuit Of Farmer Michael Hayes" sounded truly modern in its lyrics without sacrificing the character of traditional song - and Planxty managed to produce mood changes a listener would never notice. The jigs "East At Glendart" and "Brian O'Lynn" show the degree to which Planxty moved away from basic Irish music through Matt Molloy's presence on flute. One of the things that made "After The Break" such a special album was the way in which the woodwinds interplayed on "East At Glendart" and "Brian O'Lynn".

The dark "You Rambling Boys Of Pleasure" showed that Planxty could grow in depth and loosen up to beautiful effect without sacrificing their traditional credentials, whilst the raucous reel "The Blackberry Blossom" showed the band playing much more starkly and sharply than on previous albums. Liam O'Flynn gave the same ecstatic emotion on uillean pipes that made Kate Bush's "Night Of The Swallow" so incredible, aided again by Molloy's melodic flute in the background. The forthright, eerie yet catchy "The Rambling Siúler" was the strongest song here: fast and simple, yet so true a story that one is shocked that Christy Moore can maintain his feeling without despair, and "The Bonny Light Horseman" almost managed the same trick to the same degree.

Besides their use of beautiful, dark flute melodies, Planxty closed "After The Break" with a surprise in the form of the Bulgarian dance tune "Smeceno Horo". Illustrating the connection between Irish and East European culture, the tender flute sounded quite like a pipe in some places, and "Smeceno Horo" really was far more danceable than anything ever mut out by English folk groups: the rhythm was emphasised to compensate for the absence of melodic, touching vocals. Moreover, the song changes rhythm so abruptly that Planxty makes one never notice it at all.

Sharper, yet at the same time more expansive and more tuneful, this album and its follow-up The Woman I Loved So Well are where Planxty showed themselves the undoubted masters of Irish folk music after struggling on their earlier albums. Hard to find, but worth the effort.