Orion: "Restless Home" (Keltia Musique)
This Breton-coloured album comes from a mixed-Celtic council of Scottish, Belgian, Brittany and Quebecois folk, with Donal Lunny supervising the Irish tunes. The prime melodic talents are wild fiddler Rudy Velghe, and crystalline box-player Raquel Gigot, shivering great rhythmic ornament out of the main melodic lines. Velghe chips in some dreamy tunes of his own, while Jamie McMenemy renders Eugene Kearney's Far Off Fields over a sparky 7/8 accompaniment worthy of Andy Irvine. The rest are sets of jigs, reels, gavottes, rondes, O'Carolans, Bulgarian or dizzying gypsy tunes. Some of the arrangements leave even the best tunes running around looking for the exit - still, these are sessions you'd happily pull your chair in closer to.
By Mic Moroney
Aine Meirbhic: "An Buachaillin Ban" (Independent/ECAD)
There is something extraordinarily hard and pure about the timbre of this sean nos singer from Glanmire, Co Cork. Her pitch control, oscillating tremolo and spookily piercing high notes set up resonances in your occipital bone. But there's great soft sweetness in the way she leans into a tune: the sad solemnity of Na Connerys, the gentle play of An Cailin Aerach, great old love songs such as Inion an Fhaoit' On nGleann, or, more particular to herself, the title tune handed down from her great grandfather, and A Chara Chlumhail Diograis from her great-grandfather, the poet Labhras O Conchubhair (both collected by Fr Padraig Breathnach in 1913). Combining a very modern ear with this old duchas, she has the best of both worlds.
By Mic Moroney
Sonny George: "Truckin' Country" (Spin)
Don't be surprised if Vicar Street in Dublin is jam-packed with 16-wheelers this Sunday night, because Sonny George will be in town touting his brand of trucker-friendly country rockabilly. Truckin' Country strips the music down to its roots and lets fly with the kind of raucous, trashy rhythms that call for a beer or three, provided, of course, that you are not driving. George wrote all but one of the 14 tracks, and, not surprisingly, the theme of trucking is pretty consistent. Tracks such as The Truck Stops Here, Have Wheels Gotta Roll and The Lone Masked Trucker might seem like stretching a joke a truck too far, but our hero knows how to mix his styles. The result is amusing, entertaining and wonderfully off-beam.
By Joe Breen
