Planxty - Cold Blow And The Rainy Night (CD)

Recorded at Sarm Studios in London in August 1974 with Phil Coulter producing, this is the third Planxty album and the last of their original run before the band broke up the following year. By now Johnny Moynihan had replaced Dónal Lunny alongside Christy Moore, Andy Irvine and Liam O'Flynn, though Lunny still guests, and the record captures the first era of the band at its loosest and most adventurous.

The songs are some of their best loved: Christy's definitive Lakes of Pontchartrain, Andy's rousing Johnny Cope and emigrant lament The Green Fields of Canada, and Moynihan's sly P Stands for Paddy. Between them sit polkas, reels and jigs driven by O'Flynn's peerless piping, plus a glimpse of things to come in Băneasă's Green Glade / Mominsko Horo, Irvine's early Balkan excursion that pointed the way for so much of his later work. A cornerstone of the Irish folk revival, made by the band that lit the fuse.