https://www.boards.ie/ Thu, 25 Jun 2026 19:00:28 +0000 en john carty — boards.ie - Now Ye're Talkin' https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2055900397/the-10-best-trad-albums-of-the-noughties Sun, 02 May 2010 18:57:14 +0000 Traditional tarbolton 2055900397@/discussions


So here is my vote for the 10 best traditional recordings of the decade.

1. Mick O’Brien & Caoimhín O’Raghallaigh – Kitty Lie Over
2. Martin Hayes & Denis Cahill – Welcome here again
3. John Carty – Yeah that’s all it is
4. John Carty – I will if I can
5. Matt Molloy & John Carty – Pathway to the well
6. West Ocean String Quartet with Matt Molloy – The guiding Moon
7. Michael O’Raghallaigh – The nervous man
8. Oisin Mac Diarmada – Ar an bhfidil
9. Iarla O’Lionaird – Invisible fields
10. Mick, Louise And Michelle Mulcahy - Notes From The Heart

My favourite album of the decade was the startlingly brilliant Kitty Lie Over by Mick O’Brien & Caoimhín O’Raghallaigh. An album of uileann pipes/fiddle duets it pulled off the extraordinary trick of sounding like it could have been recorded any time in the last 60 years and sounding totally unprecedented, all at the same time. I could say that it takes its cues from the 1970 recording by Denis Murphy And Julia Clifford – “The Star Above the Garter” and that there are hints of the Old Time American and the Norwegian Hardanger fiddle traditions but really attempts at trying to describe its brilliance and originality inevitably fail – I am afraid you just have to hear it yourself!

If there was one musician who left his fingerprints all over the noughties it was John Carty. As a master of the fiddle, banjo, flute and guitar he turned up on four of the albums on the list above (he’s on Oisin Mac Diarmada’s CD as well) as well as touring and making great records with the groups At The Racket and Patrick Street and a few more himself. So he has to be the musician of the decade!

But that’s just my take on it! Let us know what you think and together we might end up with a sense of trad in the noughties, what happened, what was great, what mattered, what didn’t,…

So go on! Tell us! The noughties – how were they for you?]]>