Nellie Rua’s is a welcoming spot in Ballycastle Pil pil prawns and goat cheese bon bons at Nellie Rua's What’s oozing out of the PA in this welcoming little coastal pub on a nippy autumnal afternoon is the very reason I spent my formative years explaining what I meant by country music — and why I enjoyed it. I don’t quite know how to describe it. It has some of the artificial vocalised false perfection of overwrought chart drivel, a touch of the traditional themes by which ‘country and western’ uses as bricks and mortar — loves lost, your favourite truck, or drinking too much hooch, for example — but lacks anything resembling genuineness, and depth-wise doesn’t get past the first step of the shallow end of the children’s pool.
Townes Van Zandt, this is not..