Tir Na Nog - In the Morning - Alternate Version (1970)

I'm going to post a few things from the Irish folk duo Tir Na Nog, starting here. They're rather obscure. I hadn't even heard of them until a couple of years ago (as I write this in 2023). But if you haven't heard of them either, you might want to give them a try. Here's how they're described in their Wikipedia entry: "They are often considered one of the first progressive folk bands with other artists like Nick Drake or groups like Pentangle. Their music mainly consists of their own compositions, based on strong Celtic roots and typically featuring intricate acoustic guitar playing and close harmony singing."

The duo consists of Leo O'Kelly and Sonny Condell, with both of them singing and writing songs. They put out three albums from 1971 to 1973 that were critically acclaimed but didn't sell that well. They probably would have done a lot better except for the fact that they broke up after only those three albums. They later reunited, and put out a new studio album in 2015, but their momentum had been lost.

Here's the band's Wikipedia entry, if you want to know more:

Tír na nÓg (band) - Wikipedia

But instead of thinking of them putting out three studio albums in the early 1970s, you really could make it four. In 1999, the album "In the Morning" was released. It consists of 15 previously unreleased demos recorded in 1970, before the band recorded anything else. I've created an alternate version by removing all the songs that were later included on their other studio albums in that time period. Then I also added the A- and B-sides to a 1970 single, because those two songs never appeared on any of their later albums. (They did make it as bonus tracks to a much later release of their 1971 album "Tir Na Nog.") 

Even with the two extra songs, this album is rather short, at 30 minutes. But I don't think the demos of the songs that they later recorded for other albums are that different from those album versions, so I think this is a much better listen. The sound quality is very good, since these were done in a studio. However, I thought the lead vocals of the song "Patterns" were too low in the mix, so I used the audio editing program Spleeter to boost them. That's why there's "[Edit]" in that song title.

Their other albums generally contained only songs they wrote themselves. But this one has a number of cover songs. There's "Patterns" by Simon and Garfunkel, "Story of Isaac" by Leonard Cohen, "To Susan on the West Coast Waiting" by Donovan, "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry" by Bob Dylan, and "Songs to Ageing Children Come" by Joni Mitchell. As you can see from those names, they knew to cover songs by the very best folk artists. The other five songs are originals.

By the way, technically speaking, the band's name should be: "Tír na nÓg." But I'm using a more conventional spelling, without the accents marks, due to many computers having trouble with those marks. In case you're curious, the band's name means "Land of the Young" and is a Celtic supernatural realm.

01 Patterns [Edit] (Tir Na Nog)
02 A Day in the Hay (Tir Na Nog)
03 Story of Isaac (Tir Na Nog)
04 To Susan on the West Coast Waiting (Tir Na Nog)
05 Maude and Co. (Tir Na Nog)
06 It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry (Tir Na Nog)
07 Songs to Ageing Children Come (Tir Na Nog)
08 My Flower Will Not Fade (Tir Na Nog)
09 I'm Happy to Be [On This Mountain] (Tir Na Nog)
10 Let My Love Grow (Tir Na Nog)

https://www.imagenetz.de/mmc8C

I used the official album cover art, for the most part. I didn't like the red text on it. All of the text was too small to be read easily. Plus, there was a bunch of promotional or administrative text that was unnecessary. So I removed that text, and kept just the band name and album name. I used the same font, color, and location as before, but made it larger, and framed it in white to make it stand out more.