Quicksilver and giddy in its exploration of Irish music, language and identity, Trá Pháidín’s second album bursts open the idea of a 21st-century traditional folk record. It woos you with the reverb-smothered guitars and birdsong-like flutes of Tí Mhichael Phaddy (Michael Paddy’s House, an opener suggesting a psychedelically perfect rurality) before an Irish woman cuts in, bigging up her countryside Airbnb on the phone. A shouty local then comically interrupts her.
Trá Pháidín (Paddy’s Beach) are a six-strong collective of brilliant musicians from Galway, Ireland’s largest Irish-speaking county, and their album’s title, Cloch’s Claí (Stone and Dry Stone Wall), suggests that each track plays its own scabrous, weight-bearing part in the whole. The 45 minutes unfold as an interrupted sequence, full of improvisation, texture and ornament, the band freely roaming other genres, revealing them as connected neighbourhoods.
