Laghdú Reviewed

20 Sep 2014

During my visit to NJ, I convinced my former thesis advisor, Dan Trueman, that it’d be a good idea to hang out with me. He fell for it! A few days later, I sat in his office and we had a pleasant talk about all sorts of things. But at some point my eyes wandered to a beautiful folded piece of paper held together by two equally beautiful, yellow rubber bands. What is this wonderful machination? I reached out for it. I was touching pure beauty…

Dan interrupted my special moment with the folded piece of paper. “That’s my new album.” Dear God, Dan! You’re telling me this isn’t a gift from God?! It’s a music album?! I looked back at the album and noticed the two pairs of 10 lines. “It’s a collaboration between me and Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh.” Sounds Irish to me. You know what else is near Ireland? NORWAY! And you know what’s from Norway and has 10 strings? HARDANGER FIDDLES! Dan seemed impressed by my deductive reasoning.

But my mind had only begun to be blown. The paper felt Californian in nature – very, very recycled. “The album is very “green.” It uses soy-based inks on sustainable paper at a factory that produces its own electricity. Wowzers! But then Dan floored me. “The water leaving the plant is cleaner than it is when it enters.” Are you kidding me? This album is also helping the environment?!

Dan told me I could have the copy with which I shared such an intimate moment… If I listened to it. I took it, admired it the entire way home, and then I listened to it. I’m not really good at explaining music, but I enjoyed it. My favorite track was “What What What” because it has an awesome name, and it’s the track that I could best visualize Dan jamming out too.

Some may say physical media is dead, but not only is Laghdú a pleasure to listen to, it revived my faith in media physica. The album comes out in a week on September 27th. You can order a copy of this majestic beauty from store.irishmusic.net. For those heathens not taken with the beauty of the album cover, there’s a digital option too. But you’re not a heathen, are you?!