Lily

Christy Moore's first album since 2013's Where I Come From finds the bard of County Kildare in characteristically understated form as he celebrates his half-century performing. The anniversary seems to have prompted several lingering glances over the shoulder towards the apparent certainties of the past.

The only new self-penned song here – the gently jaunty title-track – pays affectionate tribute to his Newbridge roots. Lead single ‘The Tuam Beat’ is a spryly nostalgic celebration of a more community-minded past. Paul Doran's reflective ‘The Gardener’ hymns the wisdom of those attached to the soil. But it's not all rose-tinted spectacles. Decidedly more dyspeptic is the cover of the late Mick Blake's ‘Oblivious’, which foregrounds Moore's sceptical ambivalence towards Ireland's recent Easter Rising centenary celebrations. Peter Gabriel's protest in support of political prisoners, ‘Wallflower’, and John Spillane's lament for a murdered fisherman, ‘The Ballad of Patrick Murphy’, show that Christy Moore's slow-burning anger at injustice remains unquenched.

Aficionados will appreciate covers of Declan O’Rourke's lyrical and lithe ‘Lightning Bird Wind River Man’, the traditional ‘Green Grows the Laurel’ boasting new lyrics by Moore, and the compelling spoken account of Dave Lordan's evocative poem ‘Lost Tribe of the Wicklow Mountains’. A pity about the miserly playing time, though.