The requisite Celtic soul, man

On Clannad, Enya and reappraising our Celtic New Age pioneers

Clannad and Enya on the cover of Fuaim (1982)

In November 1982, Clannad became the first and only act to sing as Gaeilge on Top Of The Pops. Standing on a smoke-covered stage, their traditional instruments swapped out for a Prophet-5 synthesiser, the Gweedore folk band performed their unlikely hit, ‘Theme from Harry’s Game’. 

The ethereal hymn had been commissioned to soundtrack a dramatic mini-series set during The Troubles in Northern Ireland. It layered its vocal harmonies – an old Connacht proverb in the verses and a slowed down interpretation of Irish “mouth music”, or portaireacht bhéil, in the chorus – over a mournful chord progression for a little over two minutes. Remarkably, it reached No. 5 in the UK charts. 

By this point, Clannad – then a five-piece comprising siblings Moya, Pól and Ciarán Brennan and their twin uncles Noel and Pádraig Duggan – had released several albums of acoustic folk music, and had a fairly avid following in Europe. Their previous two records, 1981’s Crann Úll and 1982’s Fuaim, had both featured a younger Brennan sister, Eithne, on keys and backing vocals, although she was only credited on the latter. She left soon after its release alongside the band’s managers, Nicky and Roma Ryan, to embark on her own path as Enya, now Ireland’s best-selling solo artist.  

Despite Enya’s departure, Clannad were doing pretty well – but ‘Theme from Harry’s Game’ changed everything. Leaning into the electronic instrumentation they’d only dabbled in previously, it set them on course for a new sound and international acclaim. Between 1983 and 1987, U2 used the song to close out their shows; it later appeared in the 1992 Harrison Ford thriller Patriot Games, and in a 1993 Volkswagen ad in the U.S. In 1999, Moya Brennan re-recorded its vocals with new lyrics to feature on Chicane’s trance anthem, ‘Saltwater’. 

All the while, Clannad continued to develop their Celtic New Age signature. 1983’s Magical Ring incorporated reverberant electronics and flute-like keys into spellbinding singles ‘Newgrange’ and ‘I See Red’, while 1984’s Legend wove mystical-sounding synths into their folk tapestry to soundtrack ITV’s Robin of Sherwood series. Over the ensuing years, they’d collaborate with Bono on ‘In A Lifetime’, win a Grammy and a BAFTA, play shows all over the world, and mistakenly inspire the title of a popular Japanese anime franchise. By the time they’d wrapped up their farewell tour in 2023, they’d sold over 15 million records worldwide, enshrining them as one of the most successful Irish acts of all time. 

But Clannad were always bigger abroad than they were at home. Even in their early days, the young band were baulked at for singing in their native Irish and meddling with the framework of traditional music; their contemporary twists on older tunes were more readily welcomed by audiences in Germany. Don’t get me wrong, ask around nowadays and you’ll find responses to the group’s music among Irish listeners to be broadly positive, but they can often feel a bit muted or indifferent. I’d be the first to admit that, outside of the obvious hits, I’ve never really felt all that impelled to go deeper into their catalogue, and I don’t think I’m alone in that. Among other Millennial and Gen-Z listeners, the sense I get is that, sure, we like Clannad well enough, but we hold their music at a distance. The question is, why?

Itermission (2003)

I’m reminded of a scene from one of my favourite films, the 2003 indie comedy Intermission starring Cillian Murphy, Colin Farrell, Kelly Macdonald and an excellent ensemble cast. In it, after Colm Meaney’s deeply pretentious detective Jerry Lynch has his car stolen by Farrell’s Lehiff, our gang of brown sauce-slurping crooks looks for something to listen to on the stereo. Finding only Magical Ring, the reaction is a resounding “fuck that” until, moments later, all three are mumbling along to the slo-mo portaireacht chorus of ‘Newgrange’ while gazing wistfully out the window. 

Lynch, we quickly learn, is a self-appointed acolyte of Celtic mysticism; a devoted fan of Clannad as well as fictional “artistes” like Fainne Lasta, Raithneach and Amhann na Ngealach. During the film’s final stand-off, he tells Lehiff that he doesn’t have “the requisite Celctic soul” to appreciate these high-brow sounds: “The power of certain artistes is beyond the ken of cunts like you.”

Maybe it’s that we see Clannad – with their New Agey airs and Celtic imagery – as being a bit… Corny? Inauthentic? Notions-y? The lure of ‘Newgrange’ may be impossible to shake, but no one wants to be like Jerry Lynch. It’s an exaggerated bit, obviously, but something about it hits home: there’s a kitschiness to post-Harry’s Game Clannad that triggers resistance in us. But is this assessment fair? Have I – we – got it all wrong? Are Clannad actually cool? Over the past few weeks, I’ve fallen into a wormhole that’s rid me of my preconceptions and made me think, yeah, maybe they are. 

It all started when I stumbled upon a broadcast from March 1982, six months prior to that fateful Top Of The Pops performance, when Clannad appeared on the Swiss TV show Karussell to promote their sixth album, Fuaim. The clip features two tracks: an acoustic instrumental called ‘Lá Breá fán dTuath’ and ‘An tÚll’, one of two songs on the record to feature Enya on lead vocals. Something about this video stopped me in my tracks – this wasn’t the Clannad I thought I knew. 

Maybe it was Enya – a famously reclusive artist so often shrouded in mystery and electronic ethereality – appearing here as an unknown 21-year-old, singing this gorgeous melody accompanied by acoustic instruments. Maybe it was the fact that each band member looked like someone you could feasibly borrow a lighter from in the smoking area of your favourite local indie venue. Seeing these young musicians, each on the precipice of global renown, performing this uplifting Irish folk-pop tune, lit a fuse. I needed more.

‘An tÚll’ was a gateway. Soon I was listening through Fuaim, imagining how good a Weyes Blood cover of ‘Strayed Away’ would sound, or how easily someone could stick a beat under the harmonised acapellas of ‘Mhórag 's na Horo Gheallaidh’. But really, I was just loving these songs as they were. I found myself getting sucked further into their earlier albums, relishing in the progressive quirks they worked into traditional tunes like ‘Siúil a Rúin’ and ‘Ar a Ghabháil 'n a 'Chuain Domh’.

Then there’s 1989’s Atlantic Realm, a (mostly) instrumental, purely electronic suite that was commissioned to soundtrack a BBC wildlife documentary about the Atlantic Ocean, but could just as easily stand up to anything Roger Doyle or Pauline Anna Strom were conjuring around that time. It’s the sort of record that wouldn’t feel out of place in the Music From Memory catalogue. Northern Irish audiovisual artist Stephen McLaughlin, aka An Trinse, recently mentioned that the album is one of his all-time favourites, and that he’s sampled it in just about every project he’s ever worked on. 

This is worth noting. Over the past decade or so, Enya has rightly been reappraised, her ultra-successful, film-scoring discography fully recognised for how genuinely influential it has been, particularly in electronic and experimental pop music. In a really excellent 2020 piece for Pitchfork, the writer Jenn Pelly pointed to the impact Enya has had on artists including Oneohtrix Point Never, FKA Twigs, Perfume Genius and Emily A. Sprague. When I spoke to Caroline Polachek earlier this year for an article about her cover of the cult Irish pop song ‘Spring Is Coming With A Strawberry In The Mouth’, she described Enya as being both a personal and artistic lodestar: “It sort of set the blueprint for me,” she said, “for my relationship with electronic textures, that they don't need to reference instruments, they don't need to reference technology, they just need to reference energy and emotion and feelings in the service of telling a story… Enya is the master of that.”

In not one but two articles for The Quietus, Luke Turner has railed against the “prevailing view of [Enya] as a dated, patchouli car-freshener relic of 80s MOR”, describing her as a “not merely a pop inspiration for the avant-garde, but an artist who ought to be respected as a pioneer in her own right.” 

I wonder, is it time we gave Clannad a similar re-evaluation? Enya’s music may have reached further in its time, but her relatives in the Brennan and Duggan family have left behind a significant discography of genuinely amazing music that feels more than ready for a resurgence among young audiences. Amidst the traditional folk revival we’re witnessing in Ireland at the moment, which has seen the likes of Lankum, John Francis Flynn, Landless and The Mary Wallopers make an international impact with their modern takes on the form, maybe it’s time we opened our hearts a bit more to this band, who were so often maligned for bending convention in their early days. When we have acts like Kneecap taking the Irish language to a global stage, it’s worth remembering the first time a song played as Gaeilge made prime time British TV. 

I’m no Clannad scholar, but lately I’m feeling like a convert, and I’d love it if you joined me. 

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Thanks for reading. I’ll be back next month with another round-up of new Irish music and the first in the Anois, Os Ard mix series. Don’t forget to subscribe!