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Clannad In this brief sojourn to Ireland, for some neo-folk goodies, lets not forget a true behemoth of Celtic music: Clannad. Now famously known for giving us oodles of egregiously bad tin-whistle and keyboard-laden approximations of Irish new age music, and introducing the world to the wonderful Enya (who I’ll defend to no end!)…before, there…
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Planxty As we continue to flesh out England’s neo-folk lineage it becomes ever more important to visit their Irish brethren. A brief sojourn there, around that time especially, starts to bare much more fruit to sample. Groups like Planxty who originally started out as young lads helping older traditional singers, only to find their own…
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Horslips Can you almost feel the finish line? Allow me to go back a year, to a year 1973, when another band of Dubliners such as Horslips, whose name derives from the wordplay of “The Four Poxmen of The Horslypse,” figuratively rained Celtic rock bombs on the masses. Spurred on by the sound of early…
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Van Morrison, his pooch, and Carol Guida November, has gone and past, but its effects still linger. Physically, the body feels the languidity of the environment taking over. Emotionally, the fog of memories and an overabundance of pressures; whether work, relationship, or fraternal, start to weigh on you. Spiritually, you attempt to draw on the…
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William DeVaughn It’s Thanksgiving! What a great time to remind yourself to take some time away and take stock of what y’all gots. No other track speaks quite as soulfully about today, and let’s be honest, any day much like William DeVaughn’s “Be Thankful For What You Got”. Enjoy your day and pay mind to…
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Duncan Browne Londoner Duncan Browne is another one of those brilliant, forgotten ones. In 1973, with classical guitar in tow, he released another great totem for neo-folk music. His self-titled sophomore album combined some of that astounding experimentation with folk forms that John Martyn had shown, only he did it with more tempered, bittersweet music.…
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John Martyn (Danny Thompson in the back) If John’s fans thought that he had gone out there for Solid Air, imagine the look on their faces the first time they heard Inside Out. Now trekking further beyond what any artist was doing at that time, John amped up his experimental side until it broke from its seams.…
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John Martyn When you hear the first percussive taps of John Martyn’s acoustic on “Solid Air”, you know this is something special. Written about and dedicated to his friend Nick Drake, it represented something even more beguiling, a fork in the road. His friend was in the throes of depression, to the point that any…
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Pharoah Sanders 1971 Imagine you’re a neo-folk artist listening to “Astral Traveling” by one of your idols, Pharoah Sanders, back in 1971. Imagine that you’re John Martyn, the young folkie who just created the minor masterpiece Bless the Weather your first foray into a more modern type of English folk music. Although it was popular among folk…
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Carole Pegg I guess you can call this a “A Track, A Day” exclusive. Remember the sinisterly awesome Mr. Fox band? Lead by Bob and Carole Pegg, they pioneered a darker form of neo-folk which drew from their Yorkshire Dale region. Before the dark tales of Comus, theirs was the haunting sound that shocked early…
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