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No matter how hard--and I have been trying real hard--I cannot get myself back to the feelings I had jigging and reeling at Horslips concerts at the end of the Seventies. It was 25 years ago in some dance hall in Bundoran with my old friends, the Walker brothers (not those ones!). It was magical and very, very sweaty. Horslips were the high kings of Irish rock. Yes, it was the year of U2 debut Boy_ but that was all the future. Horslips were trawling the treasures of Irish past. They recorded concept albums based on Irish myth and legend. The Táin and The Book of Invasions tied them into the over-indulgent prog-rock going on outside the island and Jim Lockhart's rocking flute must have drawn comparisons with Jethro Tull, but no one played the flute like Jim Lockhart. No one.

Where Horslips differed from the other purveyors of prog-rock was that they were a folk band. They were organic. They were real. They had soul--Irish traditional rock soul. It was the traditional instruments of Charles O'Connor, mandolin, concertina and flying fiddle that danced up audiences. Their melodies were often re-workings of old Irish airs, and by the time it all broke down at the start of the Eighties they had a unique sound that without doubt was stolen by Big Country's pipe playing big stadium guitar flings.

Twenty-five years later and Horslips are back with an album of reworked classics. Roll Back sees them taking the songs and stripping them back, slowing them down, and reinventing them. There is apprehension. These guys were electric and bounced the dance floor. How would they sound in a world of restraint? Remarkably good. Great in fact. Which should be no surprise. Horslips were a bunch of seriously talented musicians, and that aspect comes out in these recordings. What also becomes evident very quickly is the strength of the songs. Allowed to breathe a little, they sound so well crafted, and it is most intriguing to see the breadth of their twelve albums given the same template as opposed to the very Celtic sound of early albums and universal commercialism of the later years. It leads the songs into timelessness. "Trouble" (with a Capital "T") remains immense--though the live version, as seen on the enhanced bonus CD adds Lockhart's signature flute--which is crucial, certainly to the memory. Mad Pat becomes a story song as opposed to a right old knees-up, and "Furniture" shines in a whole new light. O'Connor's fiddle on "The Power and The Glory" is powerful and glorious! These versions of "The Man Who Built America" and "The Wrath Of the Rain" are just a couple of years too late. Indeed, one wonders if the entire project is to make Martin Scorcese mad that he chose U2 for the soundtrack to Gangs of New York when these songs had been written about those very streets and characters a quarter of a century before.

As well as songs opened afresh, there are these memories I am trying to capture. They were the best live band in the world, and the world didn't want to know. I'd never danced so much, and much as The Waterboys would try, I never did again. I fell in love with my island, its heritage and its artistic brilliance. But most of all O'Connor's fiddle, Lockhart's flute and Fean's guitar lit the centre of my soul with magic and mystery and I exploded all over a dance hall in Bundoran. Roll back!

Steve Stockman 1/22/2005