The 0.03 per cent of my brain which reacts like an authoritarian schoolmarm rose up shrieking throughout this concert of talented, Galway/Sligo-based, 20-something trad musicians. It was like a big session without the drink: enormously diverting but musically, totally exasperating.
Again, Music Network coughed up an odd acoustic mix: Westport-born Laoise Kelly's harp competing with Jarlath McTernan's pipes; Mirella Murray's piano-accordion; and Manchester boy-wonder, John Joe Kelly's bodhran.
The unison sets were introspective and unpropulsive, and to my great regret, Laoise Kelly - the lynchpin of the flaming gig - capitulated to the volume of others, concentrating mostly on fabulous chord-vamping, rather than her trademark dance tune settings.
Murray and Kelly had nice moments, like that head-dithering tune, Saratoga; while John Joe let loose some colourful bodhran solos, bringing a friendly house down with a shy, deadpan mega-didle.
The boys, however, were nearly firing paper rockets at each other when the girls took solos, distracting greatly from Murray's dreamy Karen Tweed tunes, with her incredibly light-fingered style, accented with Atlantic brine.
McTernan was the ringleader here, with an impish grin on him that would spoil hatred. He made Kelly burst out laughing in the middle of her extraordinary setting of Princess Beatrice. And the only time he shut up was when he knuckled down to his own set of reels, with a horseracing style of derailed, inside-out rhythms, and fashionable, molten, jazzy touches creeping into the second parts.
Tour continues tonight at the Rynn Valley Hotel, Mohill, Co Leitrim, and continues to Virginia, Manorhamilton, Co Letirim, Skerries, Co Dublin and Tinahely, Co Wicklow. To book, phone 01-6719429
