The Acoustic Sessions

The Acoustic Sessions is an album issued by Decca on 24 January 2025. The Japanese pressing is a single SHM-CD (JAN 4988031690208) of nine songs running about forty-two minutes. The material comes from Thin Lizzy's years on Decca — the 1971 debut Thin Lizzy, 1972's Shades of a Blue Orphanage and 1973's Vagabonds of the Western World — together with the 1972 single 'Whiskey in the Jar'. The project belongs to founding guitarist Eric Bell. Around Phil Lynott's vocals and Brian Downey's drumming from the period, Bell has built new acoustic guitar parts, and the songs are reassembled on that footing. It is the first time 'Whiskey in the Jar' has been released in an acoustic setting. The running order opens on 'Mama Nature Said' and moves through "A Song for While I'm Away" and 'Eire'. The instrumental 'Slow Blues - E.B.' sits in the middle, then 'Dublin', 'Whiskey in the Jar' and 'Here I Go Again' lead to the seven-minute 'Shades of a Blue Orphanage' and 'Remembering Pt. 2'. What the sequence shows is how far the early repertoire already leaned on Irish folk and the blues: the material takes this treatment without being bent into it.