Hooray for Humans are great. Safekeeping is beautiful. They get my vote.

Ive only got Cathy Daveys and Future Kings, both good but Ive given my vote to Cathy

Jenny Lindfors when the night comes. Fantastic.

Hooray for Humans for me! It sounds fresh, has some terrific songs and great harmonies.

Welcome to all these brand new members whose first post is on this very thread. You will be hanging around and participating in other discussions, and not just voting in this poll, you will won't you?!

very good eoghan, very good!

I've noticed this on a few other polls for Best Irish album, especially with one particular album. Just a shame that the acts in question have to resort to this kind of thing. Down with this kind of thing!

Er.. I'm assuming that's a reference to us and the fact that we're ahead in this poll.
I presume the only reason we're ahead is because we threw up a bulletin on myspace - so I'd imagine a few of our online friends registered so they could vote. I seriously doubt that if the likes of Cathy Davey or Delorentos did the same we'd be anywhere near 1st place in this poll.
We don't have any control over what people do online, funnily enough. So no, we haven't "resorted" to anything.

thing is, they don't need to - unlike H4H or Mumblin' Deaf Ro who seems to be leading a couple of other online polls too.

Yes, that was my point. They don't need to.

When I saw the line-up I naturally assumed one of the bigger bands would run away with it. So I figured if we even get a few votes, we might make the top 5 and some people might check us out based on that. I didn't realise this was a poll where getting 9 votes would mean we had twice as many votes as anyone else.

The only reason I even knew we were in this poll was because Eoghan emailed me telling me we were. He also mentioned that we could feel free to tell our friends to register to vote. Which, strangely, he has neglected to mention here.


Do you want to tell me about the other polls we've "rigged"? Because that's a pretty serious accusation to be throwing around if you ask me.

Cathy Davey's album is sublime.

Adrian Crowley's 'Long Distance Swimmer' is pretty special.

Just to be clear there's no "rigging" going on in this poll. If I saw one act leading the poll with, say, 10 times the number of votes of the next best placed album I'd raise an eyebrow but that's not the case. The numbers of votes in so far are simply not enough to imply any sort of "rigging" by any act.

To be absolutely clear, shortly after the poll opened I started emailing acts whose album had made this poll and for whom I was able to dig up an email address. The email was to let them know their album was chosen and that they could feel free to spread the word as they saw fit. This was very deliberate on my part as these end of year polls have always been a way that CLUAS brought in new visitors, an ulterior motive being to hopefully turn these new visitors / voters into regulars 'round these parts and maybe even a contributor to the site (hence my previous comment above). Obviously I have therefore no problem with bands sending emails or putting announcements on their websites that they are in this, or any other, end of year poll.

While I'm at it, this very poll is also a bit of an experiment. We haven't done one like this on the discussion board before and, considering it has a barrier to voting (the need to be a registered member of the board to vote, the first time we have put such a 'barrier; in place) I am curious to see how many votes it receives compared to the other poll we are running in parallel to find the Best Album of 2007 (which does NOT require someone to be a registered member to vote). That other poll has already - no surprise - received way more votes (over 360 at the time of writing which saw voters express (a statistically significant) 1400 or so album prefererences).

eoghan

Just voted for Adrian Crowley's album Long Distance Swimmer. A late-comer in 2007, I think this one is going to be on my playlist favourites for sometime to come...

Apoloigies. What I meant to say was "unlike H4H - or Mumblin' Deaf Ro who seems to be leading a couple of other online polls too"

Please note that I also never used the word "rigged".

Nothing wrong with a bit of self-promotion!

(I'm not affiliated with any of the bands in the poll!)

Definitely the best Irish Female album of the year. She played Campbells Tavern for the Galway Arts Festival in July, one of the best gigs I've seen all year.(in the best venue in the country!)

To Hell or Barbados - Fantastic album, definitely best Irish male album of the year.

Adrian Crowley...oh man - its just gorgeous.

absofrickinluteley!

You could always spoil your ballot by voting for Damien Dempsey ;D