The latest releases reviewed.

GRÁDA
Cloudy Day Navigation
Compass Records
***

Gráda tick all the boxes - musically inventive, with a healthy appetite for cross-fertilisation - yet their third album betrays a certain sense of déja vu. Their tunes continue to outrun their songs by the mile: Alan Doherty's flute navigating a clear pathway through a pair of Gráda originals (Carousel Of Life, Maria Letizia's) captures the band's flute/fiddle fencing at its best, with touches of Jethro Tull's jazz flourishes in Doherty's flute lines. Their song choices and pedestrian vocals, however, bludgeon the eardrums with their overweening sincerity. River might placate lonesome ex-pat audiences, but at home it reeks of a sentimentality more conjured than real. Even their handling of Sonny Condell's Cooler at the Edge ventures nowhere near the emotional void expressed in the original. Includes bonus live DVD. www.gradamusic.com   SIOBHÁN LONG

Download tracks: Maria Letizia's