Good time twangery

The journalist and broadcaster Danny Baker recently admitted that, getting on in years, he listens to almost nothing these days other than country music. I can see the appeal. If the relentless artifice of most pop music doesn’t wear you out, its sheer unbridled energy is sure to. Fortunately, the term ‘country’ now embraces a remarkable variety of performers and writers, not all of whom customarily wear enormous hats. Instead both country and, in these islands, folk have become traditions on which people can draw while creating something new and distinctive of their own. Looking at my own playlist of the past few months, I see that I am starting to tend more to the folk side of things. Twiddly fiddles and Northumberland pipes have been resisted so far, but for how much longer? Underlying this development is my growing belief that the acoustic guitar holds more secrets to happiness than the electric guitar turned up to 11. Perhaps I have always felt this way. With age comes enlightenment, as well as the inability to eat pizza after sundown.

It’s also approaching the time when people start nominating their albums of the year, so let’s begin with Christy Moore’s Burning Times (Columbia/Newberry). This actually came out in the autumn of 2005, although I didn’t buy it until this February, but who cares anyway? The best music seeps slowly into your consciousness, or at least it does into mine. Moore is a cantankerous Irish singer of folk roots and inclinations, whose records have never quite lived up to the reputation of his barnstorming live shows. I have many of his albums: one or two are overproduced, and several are woefully underproduced, as though he has spent the best part of 30 years grasping for a modus operandi that remains forever out of reach.