NewGrange: NewGrange (Compass Records)
This is an eclectic bunch, but one filled with promise. Despite an Irish-sounding name, this is a six-piece American string band which originally came together at the behest of multi-instrumentalist Mike Marshall and violinist Darol Anger. They pulled in bassist Todd Phillips, banjo whizz Alison Brown, pianist Philip Asberg and bluegrass specialist Tim O'Brien and released a Christmas album! This collection is apparently their real debut. The tone is generally folk/ bluegrass with whispers of soft jazz and muso indulgence rippling through the seriously sharp playing. O'Brien brings some traditional rigour in the shape of songs like the opening Handsome Molly, while Asberg's piano paints vivid pictures on tracks such as the original and evocative Cabin Waltz. At its best this is ensemble playing of the highest calibre though occasionally, as is often the case with crossover music, some of it could be justifiably accused of veering towards background sounds.
- Joe Breen
Takashi Hirayasu and Bob Brozman: Jin Jin/Firefly (World Music Network)
Japanese is among the many languages of which I know but a word or two. This should hinder enjoyment of this odd but loveable record as 11 of the 12 mostly traditional tracks are sung in the tongue. But the fruits of this East-meets-West collaboration are translated on the sleeve so we realise once again that a songwriter on Taketumi (the most unspoiled of the Ryukyu islands of Okinawa, in the deep south of Japan) can bridge all sorts of divides with the power of sweet melody. It also helps that Takashi Hirayasu clearly has a deep knowledge of American folk music and that for this unlikely session he was joined by a guitar player of Bob Brozman's understandiing and skill. That said, I'm still amazed that these traditional Japanese songs sound so Western and familiar, notwithstanding the odd string effects and, of course, the language.
- Joe Breen
Bofield Ceili Band 100 Years a Growing (Hummingbird Records)
Merciful hour! Is it 100 years that this fine ceili band from Gort na mBo near Ballina is daintily hammering out the tunes? By Christmas 1938, after the fall-out of the Dancehalls Act, the Loftus family had set up their now-derelict ballroom at the crossroads. Now reviving under Peter Neary's baton, the band have great energetic, nimble cohesion to the gravelly unison, some runaway play on flutes and fiddles, wild piano cambers and smart little tattoos on the spoons, while the snare drum fluffs its feathers whenever it settles into a Triumphal March. With its high-kilter, hurtling power, this is good-humoured, humour-brightening music - for all the bright green waistcoats.
- Mic Moroney
Patrick Lyons Ireland In My Dreams (Independent)
This rather affecting album is supposedly all composed and performed by this founder-member of Nirvana - the late-1960s concept-album band, not Kurt Cobain's boys. It's a lush mix of trad orchestration, synths, psychobilly samples, and gloomy poems of ould Ireland. But pipes, harps, fine whistles and bodhrans: is he really playing all these instruments? Did he really compose Ireland In My Dreams, which Siobhan Peoples tells me is The Maid Behind the Bar, a tune as old as the hills. This annoys me more than his romancing of McQuaid's Catholic Ireland, yet there is a fabulous groove and vitality running through this atmospheric folk opera, with its spooked-out Angeluses and industrial madwhackery.
- Mic Moroney