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Aliens

Horslips

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Album Review

More congenial than attention-grabbing, Aliens still has some of the Irish energy of the early Horslips releases, but it's soon dissipated in the rock elements that form the majority of this semi-concept album (about Irish emigration to America). Not the worst of Horslips' albums, but overall, it's uninteresting.

Customer Reviews

Excellent album by highly underrated Irish band

I disagree with the iTunes review stating this album was uninteresting. Horslips was a pioneer in celtic rock before it became fashionable. Some may say their sound mimics Jethro Tull, but if you listen to Horslips their sound is highly original. Granted they do use the flute, but just because they have flute does not instantly put them as Tull copy bands. Is Aliens their best? I think you could easily argue for other albums, but that would simply be the listeners opinion. I fell in love with this album when it first came out on vinyl and searched for years for the CD version to come out. Initially I got duped by an unauthorized version that came out, but the guys now own the rights and put it out as an official CD release. If you are unfamiliar with the band I think this album is an excellent introduction to their sound.

Great album to get to know a uniquely sounding band.

This is the one to introduce you to the full scope of the talents of Horslips. After listening to this album I wanted to name each of my boys after the guys in the band to give our family the authentic Irish feel that I got from this enjoyable listening experience...over and over. New York Wakes is a fresh original that by itself could put the Five Points in an uproar. Ghosts is haunting! Make no mistake, this is Irish Rock, and maybe Irish Rock unequalled. If you run toward more of an American sound grab The Man Who Built America, but if you want to feel you are on the Isle of Green or sailing for New York, buy this now. You will be highly rewarded with the finely honed craftsmanship from a group that sounds like...well...Horslips, and none other!

“They say there's a country where the streets are paved with gold”

It’s strange to admit that the best thing I brought home from my first trip to Dublin, Ireland, was a rock album about America. By an Irish rock band that I'd never heard of before. But when I found the used copy of Aliens by Horslips at Mojo Records, Temple Bar, I was only trolling through music bins looking for the unknown and affordable. It was just that the name of the band in the “H” bin caught my attention because I had read Patrick McCabe’s Dead School some years before. An old CD with some wear and tear, it was also stripped of any reference points. It had no lyrics, no text connecting the songs with the earlier cycle from Book of Invasions, no website, nothing. All I had to go on was my own impressions of the music. So when the guitar riff for Speed the Plough kicked in after a moody instrumental and a fiercely energetic opening song about the rain, I started listening closely. With that one guitar riff—one of many in the repertoire of the amazing guitar ace Johnny Fean--even the poor sound quality of the disc couldn’t hide that I was hearing an aural equivalent of that first gold nugget flash in the cold-running water of the south fork of the American River. Each song unfolding the story after that: Sure the Boy was Green; Come Summer; Stowaway; New York Wakes; that earlier instrumental again developing now into a tune just barely beyond my recall, but eerily familiar; back to New York again on Second Avenue; the heart-stopping beauty of Ghosts and then the slap in the face of A Lifetime to Pay. Aliens is an excellent first-time album to buy if you have an appreciation for seventies concept albums and are introducing yourself to the music of Horslips for the first time.

Biography

Formed: 1970

Genre: Rock

Years Active: '70s, '80s, '90s, '00s, '10s

At one point in the mid-'70s, Horslips seemed poised to become Ireland's answer to Steeleye Span. But they also had a shot at being the next Jethro Tull (only a better hard rock outfit), or maybe Genesis, or even Yes in their folkier moments. Those events never quite happened, but Horslips released half-a-dozen...
Full Bio

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