The "less is more" maxim bears fruit in the strangest of settings: Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture, Donal Dineen's broadcasts, Zen gardens, Mark Rothko's art, Steve Job's iMacs - and Christy Moore's latest album, This Is The Day. The man who spent decades embracing life as though it was an assault course, whose gargantuan appetite for stimulants of every shape, texture and hue was matched by an equally colossal appetite for music, has finally stopped running to stand still.
His unorthodox approach to writing his autobiography, One Voice, signalled the shift. This was no colour-by-numbers traipse through the back catalogue, no ABC chronicle of sex, drugs and folk'n'roll. What could have been an exercise in looking back in anger was instead a peep through the prism of his songs at some of the characters and incidents that probably went some way towards shaping the person that he is today.
Almost by accident, he offered startling insights into all manner of disparate events, catalysts and circumstances to which he's been party over the past five and a half decades of his existence. Everything from the dearth of women songwriters (he's never received a song from a woman) to the nature of wealth ("It takes a lot of money to be invisible"), the rootedness of music ("Show me a scrawny auld heifer unable for a bull and I'll show you a slow air and a slip jig traipsing after it"), and the futility of interviews ("Merely a tool for commerce or for grandiosement or mutual wanking").
Now, with close to 30 albums under his belt, he' has emerged from the studio with a collection that's more thoughtful and thought-provoking than almost anything he's ever done before. Of course, he still has his critics who hear the chords but ignore the silences in between, who dissect the words but miss their meaning.
Because Christy isn't shouting of blanket protests and nuclear bombs and vice squads and Thatcherite politics, he's been castigated for having submitted himself to the dilutant of age.
The funny thing is that nothing could be further from the truth.
Maybe the difference now is that the political has become personal. The graffiti tongue has been replaced by a sign language which is open to interpretation, open to engaging in a dialogue. Christy's monologues have been replaced by conversations, with both himself and with his listener. It's a long, long way from 'Whiskey In The Jar' to 'Cry Like A Man', a Dan Penn song he sings on This Is The Day.
"Not in every decade of my life could I have spoken so freely about crying like a man,", he offers, picking his words carefully, "because I've only come to realise latterly that it's what we need to do. We've got to stop keeping it all locked away. I've no doubt that there are women who can't cry as well, but I was there myself for a long, long time.
He describes the making of this record as "a celebration of making music", buoyed by the presence of two old partners in crime (Donal Lunny and Declan Sinnott), who embellished when required, but who still knew when to unplug their amps. Taking some old songs, some new, he chose to meld them with the minimum of fuss or bother, but with a practiced ear for the universal in the specific. Songs such as Jackson Browne's 'How Long' seek out echoes everywhere from Kosovo to George Dubya politics and the Glen of the Downs. Apolitical? Hardly.
"Obviously I occupy a different space now than I occupied any other time,", he says. "I can still remember my first interview, and between then and now, I've been all over the place. I've played in exotic places like Carnegie Hall and the Royal Albert Hall, and I suppose there was a lot of hot air around too." But that was right for then.
These days he lets the songs, ike such as Arlo Guthrie's 'Victor Jara', tell their own story.
"I first heard 'Victor Jara' over 30 years ago," he says. recalls, "And I don't have any political agenda in singing it, except to say that I was struck by the manner in which he died (assassinated by Pinochet's regime in Chile) and the cruelty that was shown towards him by somebody who's still around. I have great affection and regard and admiration for Victor Jara, for his music, and his life and his death.
"With regard to Fidel and Che (Companeros), that's another great song. I'm sure not everyone in Miami would like to sing it, but I think people in Ireland will want to sing this song, and in 6six or 7seven years' time, a lot of people will be singing it."
Moore's songs are indelibly inked with the geography and the times in which they are written. 'Veronica' tells a story we're all familiar with, 'Scallcrows' casts a cold eye over the depths to which media coverage can sink.
"I love names, place names, people's names,", he nods. "I love to have 'the Cork to Dublin motorway' in that song. Every time I drive past that place, I think of that. We're all marked by the death of Veronica Guerin. Her life and her death have influenced the course of history already."
The man whose lifeblood was live performance has had a halt put to his gallop in recent years. Health difficulties now make live gigs on a scale to which he had grown accustomed, no longer possible. He's still struggling within those reins, though. The gulf between recording and live concert performances is one that's very hard to fill, he admits.
"It's very hard to reconcile myself to not performing, but basically I can't handle the circus any more,", he says. "I can't handle when all the machinery of the music business is cranked into gear. It's very powerful when you've publicists and ad campaigns. I can handle ad campaigns for albums, but not for me personally and for live performances. I just have to avoid all those shenanigans.
"For fuck's sake, I remember a few years ago, for 'Live At The Point', they had these big roadside hoardings, and you're driving down to Cork to do a gig and you see this thing! Or you're walking down Grafton Street, and you see a cardboard cutout of yourself outside a record shop! It was great at the time, but there just came a time when I just couldn't do that any more. Still, there's an obsessional, addictive animal inside of me who'd still love to do it." It seems that Christy Moore is no more adept at balancing the ying and yang of live performance and recording than anybody else. Despite the relaxed tone he strikes on his latest album, he's still struggling to resist the magnetism of the live show.
"Every now and then I get up and sing a few songs at someone else's gig, and that's fantastic. So I'm getting enough of a fix for the 'balanced guy' you hear on the record. But for the other lunatic who could become addicted to it again, every now and then I get this flash: 'Sure, why not do 365 nights in Croke Park next year?' That demon is still inside me, but I have to deal with that demon, send him on his merry way.
"I'm very comfortable with the concept of going out and playing to a room of 100 or 200 people because I feel to do that, I can be myself. But to go out to 20,000 people with just a guitar and a bunch of songs requires an act that I can no longer pull off without damage to myself. It requires an energy and an output and a projection that's dangerous - for me. Everything you have, you give it - but then you've nothing left.
"Still, just talking about it, I can feel myself getting revved up here!"
Ultimately it's the songs that matter anyway, he insists, and he'll always sing them, regardless of the location or the size of the audience. Pete Seeger, soulmate of Woody Guthrie, and a troubadour like Moore, once likened the process of reinterpreting old songs to the ways in which cooks change old recipes to fit new stomachs. Lawyers change old laws fit the demands of new citizens - and songwriters are always changing old songs to fit new ears.
"I would be more intimidated in performing some of the ancient songs than interpreting a Ewan McColl or a Dylan song,", Moore suggests. "Because I have such respect for those songs. 'The Well Below The Valley' and 'What Put The Blood', for example - these songs are sacred. They've lasted not just for generations but for thousands of years, and they're timeless. They stretch right back to the first song. I suppose the true test of any song, anyway, is that it outlives the memory and importance of its author."
Maybe the biggest difference between the Christy Moore of now and the one who sang a decade or three decades ago is in his understanding of what fuels his music, no longer sponsored by Arthur Guinness.
"I believe - ,no, I know - that I'm just a conduit,", he says emphatically. "Without that great power that's out there, I cannot get out of bed in the morning, I cannot put one foot in front of the other, and that power can all be taken away just like that.
"And that's happened to me. I've been left without the capacity to write my name and now I'm able to do it again. I just know it to be true that every note I sing is played a million times around the world every hour. There's nothing unique about the notes or words. I've been given a voice, an ability to do this - but I'm not going to take all the credit for that.
"I'll take the royalties - but not the credit!"