WITH Dermot Byrne's first note of The Dark Haired Lass a cheer went up and the ball was in for Altan, which enjoys a formidable, forgive anything, rapport with its audience. Humour was a strong ingredient no scowls here, and no quarter given to sanctimony.
And so to Byrne's terrific Bunker Hill, which he got from Ciaran Tourish ("he learnt it out of a book we got him for Christmas ... the book is called How To Play The Accordion"). Dulaman, from Mairead Ni Mhaonaigh, became "a love song about seaweed", but this devalued neither song nor music.
In the rare moments when this duet's fiddles could be heard alone there was music that was positively rakish in its abandon, biblical in its zeal. Ciaran Curran's bouzouki introduction to, and holding with, the Charlie Lennon Dance of the Honeybees created a window in the short 90 minutes where all the players could expand into self reflection. Ni Mhaonaigh's vocals and arrangements with Tourish, too, leavened the high energy mix of hard, biting reels.
Altogether a performance which, despite the technical superiority of their new Blackwater album, far surpassed it for sheer guts and attack, even if, in the process, the sound mix left Paul Kelly's guitar tinny and insubstantial and rendered Jimmy Higgins's bodhran largely mute.
