Album Review: Don't Stop This Now, Finbar Furey

Finbar Furey’s last home-released album, Paddy Dear, has now has been re-upholstered for an assault on the British market as Don’t Stop This Now. The package is enlivened with the addition of some fresh tracks and a live concert DVD filmed last year during Finbar’s 70th birthday bash. The album itself ends with the stirring uillean pipes instrumental ‘Lament For John’, which emphasises how Furey’s prowess as a piper has tended to overshadow a voice that contains the wisdom of the ages. Indeed, on ‘Annabelle’, he comes across like a vulnerable mix of latterday Dylan, Tom Waits and Willie Nelson. Those uilleann pipes bristle with emotion again on ‘Sarah Waits’, helping to evoke the forlornness of a distant war, as soldiers fight each other for their respective beliefs. ‘I Was Further Than I Thought I Was’, meanwhile, reflects on another type of absence, as an emigrant from Clare reflects on home in faraway New York. An attractive and unexpected eastern undertone delivers a pointed message on the banjo-lead ‘Co-exist’, and the banjo gets another run-out on the Famine-inspired ‘We Built A Home’, in which Furey baldly refers to that disaster as “genocide”. Elsewhere, his take on ‘The Galway Shawl’ must be in the running for definitive status, while ‘Paddy Dear’ is incredibly powerful, with whistle, pipes and strings fleshing out a track that wrings emotion from every note. Shane MacGowan has described Finbar Furey as a massive force in Ireland’s music heritage. And who’d want to argue with that? Out March 30

Rating: 8/10