DUG – ‘Have At It!’ album review: A pleasant take on trad folk, if a bit too precise
The influence of Irish traditions on the wider folk scene is far from a new thing, but when employed in the right ways, you can offer a refreshing spin on things that doesn’t feel as though it’s retreading old ground.
On their debut album, Have At It!, DUG don’t quite manage to make folk music feel modern, but they’ve created a record that has the warm embrace that one might crave in our modern times.
Hailing from both sides of the Atlantic, the duo of Californian Jonny Pickett and Scottish-born Lorkin O’Reilly originally met while living in Ireland, and bonded over their mutual love of traditional music from the island. In discovering this shared interest, they began to collaborate on music that borrowed from the troubadours of the genre’s history in both their native lands and their adopted home, resulting in their vibrant debut release.
It’s an amalgamation of folk, bluegrass and country that’s heard across the 14 tracks on DUG’s debut offering, with a smattering of covers, both of contemporary roots artists and of traditional songs such as ‘Cumberland Gap’. A great display of knowledge of these genres and the heart that goes into them can be felt, and it’s clear that both members know their way around treating these songs with care and how to lovingly present their new additions to the canon.
That said, the ultra-modern glossiness of production and a handful of references to contemporary culture make for a polish that almost feels anachronistic to the music. Everything from the stomping beat of ‘Live Long Day’ to the crisp, high-fidelity recordings of the banjos and resonator guitars on the title track is too precise and fussy in its execution, as though it was created specifically to appeal to a certain audience rather than from a desire to authentically make the music.
This doesn’t mean that the songs that make up Have At It! are bad, hackneyed or insincere, but more that they suffer from an overly-meticulous touch. It’s all very well attempting to capture the energy of a cèilidh on record, but the reality of attending one of these traditional dances is that there’s a detectably ramshackle nature to them, which is sapped out of the album in its attempts to give it a polished feel.
It’s the stripped-back moments of the record where O’Reilly and Pickett shine most, allowing their taut musicianship to take centre stage rather than needlessly embellishing it with painstaking production. The second half of the record has a run of songs which limits the duo to only playing guitars, with a few gentle touches of synth or fiddle creeping in for textural effect, and from ‘Big Sundown’ into ‘I Reside’ and their cover of Ian Felice’s ‘In Memoriam’, we get a far more candid representation of just how beautiful folk can be even with the most simplistic arrangements.
The other angle one can look at this from is that this is a pleasant way to introduce a modern audience to folk music, and its palatable and clean production has clearly lured new listeners already, given how the closing track ‘Jubilee’ was shortlisted for two Grammy nominations last year. If this were to lead people to want to discover more about the history of the genre and dig deeper, then so be it, but the delivery at times might feel a little too overcooked for it to register with long-term fans of the genre.
Defining track: ‘I Reside’ – When the duo don’t feel the need to go overboard with embellishments, the songwriting feels all the more accentuated. Guitar, banjo, slides and delicate percussion are all that’s needed to accompany the detailed storytelling, and any more would surely detract from the brilliance of this stripped-back arrangement.
For fans of: Celtic tradition being ushered into the modern world without any grim nationalistic undertones.
A concluding comment from someone pretending to have more Irish roots than they do: “This record is great craic, to be sure.”
Release date: September 19th, 2025 | Producer: Mike Halls | Label: Claddagh Records
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