andrewdotcoza

Last weekend, I bought myself two new CDs. One of them was The Essential Collection – The Fureys and Davey Arthur, which I encountered in the bargain shelf for under R40. I bought the CD because I remembered a favourite old LP record from my youth, which I loved for its haunting, raw, Waits-esqe tunes and its ability to make me believe quite genuinely (and mistakenly) that Sunday nights could be a lot worst than they were.

My new CD seems to have many of the same songs, although even this is hard to tell for certain. All Irish music is essentially similar – variations of themes that are easy to play on a violin when you are drunk, with permutations of the words, “We drink, drink, drink while the English kill our sons, HEY!” superimposed by a chorus of Aran sweater clad homeless people. Nevertheless, I usually enjoy it, but my new CD is… different.

If I were actually Irish, I would call it shyte.

It’s the sort of thing that former tourists, fresh home from the shores of the Emerald Isle, have picked up from the A Gift From Ireland store in Dublin airport departures as a present for their 13 year-old nephew who “loves music, you know”, based on the fact that he plays guitar in a highschool metal band. And the music… Oh, God! The music… It’s soppy Europop tripe with a vauge hint of traditional Irish synth sounds, and the singers actually sound sober.

This will not do at all. I have not even ripped it to my iTunes yet, and I actually have a Worsie Visser album in my iTunes. I don’t know what happened. Perhaps the LP that I remember was by a band other than the Fureys, or perhaps they sold out to The Man in an effort to win Eurovision fame. Either way, it was a decidedly depressing purchase.

The other CD that I bought is, by contrast, Absolute Garbage.

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