Customer Reviews

The Woman I Loved So Well

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I love this album so much that I just "digitalized" my old vinyl copy so I could put the music on my ipod.

Classic Planxty with that superstar lineup-- the rakish, expressive singing of Andy Irvine, the more soulful, deeper voice of Christy Moore, the amazing guitar by Donal Luny and haunting pipes of Liam O'Flynn.

This album includes "True Love Knows No Season," which is actually a Western (!)-- hearing a Western song of an outlaw sung by Christy Moore is worth the price of the album alone. The reels are wonderful, but I've always been partial to the songs, and every single song on this album is lyric, catchy, unforgettable. No comic throwaways here. "Roger O'Hehir" is an upbeat gallows song, "Kellswater" is a wistful love song (liner notes congratulate the couple on being the only people on the album to survive), "Johnny of Brady's Lea" is a haunting song of a gallant poacher who slaughters his ambushers, and "Little Musgrave" is a long ballad of adultery and revenge.

This is the classic stuff from the highlight of their career as a group. Not to be missed!

Planxty's remarkable return with the 1979 masterwork After The Break must count as a surprise given the character of the music scene in the late 1970s: they were able to achieve a power and intensity of melody not seen on their pre-breakup albums at a time when anything deviating from simple, stripped-down rock and roll was frowned upon (as it always has been in my native Australia).

"The Woman I Loved So Well" featured much the same line-up as After The Break, but adds traces of electronics. This, though no more noticeable than on June Tabor's Ashes and Diamonds, makes the tone notably softer: there is none of the ecstatic fire of parts of After The Break here. Rather, the focus is on simple, sparsely accompanied balladry, seen to excellent effect on the epic closer "Little Musgrave", the opener "True Love Knows No Season" and "Roger O'Heir".

"The Tailor's Twist", on the whole, appeared to be treading water, but Christy Moore's voice was unusually refreshing on "Kellswater", which takes time to appreciate, but the atmosphere and the song really was beautiful.

Despite its eleven-and-a-half minute length, "Little Musgrave" was amazingly simple yet every single note from the lightly-played bozoukis manages to make a wonderful impression on a listener. Christy's voice gives a feeling and depth that can only be provided through the most extreme softness: every time he sings, you just realise how sad he must feel. The reel "The Woman I Never Forgot" sound totally different from most of what Planxty did: sounding like a subdued and softly played orchestra, the sound actually comes from a concertina sounding unusually pure.

After The Break and "The Woman I Loved So Well", though unhappily out of print, are undoubtedly the finest works of pure Irish folk - undoubtedly surpassing Planxty's earlier achievements. One does hope someone can petition Tara to make them more widely available soon.

The beautiful cover, epitomising the Irish countryside in a childlike, yet spectacular way, makes this album even more desirable a purchase if it can be found.

Set your CD player to play tracks 2 and 8 and you'll go from the euphoria of the jigs to the bone chilling uilleann pipes of Liam O' Flynn on Little Musgrave and the heart wrenching story in that ballad.

You could get this album for these two tracks alone and it would be money well spent.

This is one wonderful disc. Just a few reasons why:

Breathtaking ballads-If you love beautiful ballads, you cannot find a better album Than The Woman I Loved So Well. Little Musgrave is a masterpiece. It is very long; but leaves one wishing for more.

The pipe playing on the album is hard to match. Liam O'Flynn is a king in his field-it shows here. My favorite part is again in Little Musgrave (the rest of the album is good too...really). The pipes that play during the interlude of that song are heart-wrenchingly beautiful.

Christy Moore has a great voice for these songs. Few singers or storytellers are as expressive as he is here.

I could continue to list reasons why this album is excellent, but don't trust me. Get the album for yourself. It is well worth the price.

This is one of Planxty's best. "True Love Knows No Season," and "Musgrave" are superb, but the capper for me is "Johnny of Brady's Lea." If you live your life so that someone mourns you with the pipe dirge like this...well, it takes the sting out of dying, and you will not have lived in vain. "J of B's L" is the encapsulation of all outlaw ballads - best portrays the poacher as hero.

A beautiful recording. I have worn the dots off my CD.