The Archive

Bob Dylan’s 1985 box set Biograph came with an interview in which Dylan said: “Some guys got it down – Leonard Cohen, Paul Brady, Lou Reed, secret heroes, John Prine, David Allen Coe, Tom Waits. I listen more to that kind of stuff than whatever is popular.” Despite being listed by such an authority in such exalted company, some 40 years later, Brady remains something of a “secret hero”, at least outside his Ireland, where he enjoys national treasure status. Having made his name playing traditional music in Planxty, by the early 1980s he had turned contemporary singer-songwriter, sounding like an Irish Loudon Wainwright III or a cross between Christy Moore and Sting. His songs went on to be covered by everyone from Tina Turner to Joe Cocker and there were memorable co-writes with Bonnie Raitt and Carole King. This four-disc set serves as a career retrospective – yet one with a difference, for the 64 tracks are mostly unreleased recordings from his home studio, concert performances and radio/TV broadcasts. We get demos of some of his best-known compositions such as ‘Luck of the Draw’, ‘Walk The White Line’ and ‘Trick or Treat’, live versions of his arrangements of the trad songs ‘Arthur McBride’ (which Dylan borrowed) and ‘Bruach Loch Pontchartrain’, different mixes of hits such as ‘Deep in Your Heart’ and ‘Nobody Knows’ and some fabulous duets with the likes of Kate Rusby (‘All God’s Angels’), Carole King (‘Believe in Me’) and, best of all, a luminous call-and-response jewel with the great Mary Black on ‘I Will Be There’. Some of his songs veer rather too close to the pop mainstream but then the purists said that about Dylan when he plugged in at the Newport Folk Festival. For the most part, Brady’s Irish roots are never hiding too far away.