The Bothy Band – Afterhours (CD)

Recorded at the Palais des Arts in Paris in June 1978 and released the following year on Mulligan, Afterhours captures the Bothy Band at full tilt on what would prove to be their final album before the split in 1979. The classic lineup is all present: Matt Molloy on flute, Paddy Keenan on pipes, Kevin Burke on fiddle, Dónal Lunny on bouzouki, and siblings Tríona Ní Dhomhnaill and Mícheál Ó Domhnaill on clavinet, guitar and vocals.

The sets tear along with the driving, near-telepathic momentum that made the band the most exciting live act in Irish music, from the opening Kesh Jig medley through Farewell to Erin and the closing Green Groves of Erin / Flowers of Red Hill. Between the tunes sit some of their finest songs: a spellbinding Casadh an tSúgáin, Tríona's stark reading of The Death of Queen Jane, and Dáithí Sproule's The Heathery Hills of Yarrow. In just four years the Bothy Band changed how Irish traditional music was played, and this is the sound of them doing it in front of an audience.