Andy Irvine and Paul Brady – Andy Irvine and Paul Brady (Vinyl / CD Special Edition)

Recorded at Rockfield Studios in Wales over ten days in the late summer of 1976 and released that December on Mulligan, this is one of the cornerstone albums of Irish music. Fresh from the breakup of Planxty, Irvine and Brady went in with just two accomplices, producer Dónal Lunny on bouzouki and Kevin Burke on fiddle, and came out with a record whose influence runs from Bob Dylan, who recorded Brady's arrangement of Arthur McBride, to Lankum's Radie Peat and Daragh Lynch.

That solo reading of Arthur McBride and the Sergeant remains the definitive one, but the riches run deep on every side: Irvine's driving Plains of Kildare and hurdy-gurdy-shaded Lough Erne Shore, Brady's Mary and the Soldier and The Streets of Derry, and the interlocking string arrangements that set the template for how these songs would be played for the next fifty years. Two singers at the peak of their powers, well road-tested and beautifully recorded.