Greg Brown: Covenant (Red House Records)
If, like me, you are a newcomer to the work of this Iowa singer/songwriter, then you have a treat in store. With songs draped in styles ranging from folk to country to blues, Brown offers his wry and incisive observations on modern life, touching upon the strength of relationships in a world of busy striving. His measured, rich drawl of a voice is set stark against guitarist Bo Ramsey's tasteful understated production, but it is the easy grace of Brown's fine songs which captivates and seduces. The opening 'Cept You & Me Babe sets the standard, but other tracks such Blues Go Walking, Living in a Prayer and the false closing of the delightful Pretty One More Time come very close. And if they take your fancy, he has a 14-CD back-catalogue to mine.
- Joe Breen
Jerry Garcia, David Grisman, Tony Rice: The Pizza Tapes (Acoustic Disc)
In 1993, a young man delivered a pizza to the home of the legendary Grateful Dead guitarist, the late Jerry Garcia. While there he pocketed a tape that was lying around. This tape became a widely distributed and much loved bootleg. When mandolin master David Grisman had got over his annoyance at this theft, he realised that this unique warts-and-all session by three highly respected musicians just playing for their own pleasure was something that deserved a wider audience. He was right. The Pizza Tapes features much exceptional acoustic picking, particularly by Rice and Garcia, on a range of mostly well known traditional tunes. And while Garcia's vocals are the grizzly side of raw, to hear him croak emotionally through Amazing Grace is a sound to behold.
- Joe Breen
Enda Scahill: Pick It Up (Sound Records)
This bright-spark Galway banjo sessioneer will rattle the ear off you straight away with his smart solo outings of tunes, both trad and a rake of his own which you'd half think you knew all your life, even his lazy ould hornpipe, The Happenchance. Otherwise the rapid melodies, slaming triplets and constant inventiveness have a testosterone drive, and it's no harm to have solid men behind him - Brian McGrath's canter-vamping piano, Cian's Damien Quinn's bodhran or brother Fergal/ Anthony McGrath's guitars. Hark the pellmell duets with Brendan Browne's box on the Red-Haired Lass or fiddler Jesse Smith on The New Post Office. 'Tis no wonder the Moving Cloud boys asked Scahill in, surely seriously endangering the day-job.
- Mic Moroney
Chris Wood & Andy Cutting: Knock John (RUF Records)
Having played lots of French material together, this English trad duo (with guitarist Ian Carr) consciously return to their own repertoire; or tunes composed in those idioms. Wood is an extraordinarily eclectic fiddler/composer, while Cutting's telepathic accordion is voluptuously, anxiously lyrical. One or two of the Morris tunes sound as if they would sit happy in the Irish repertoire, for all their jigger and cadence, with Wood's high, baroque/choral embellishments. But the one that always entrances me is the very English Down the Wagon Way, followed by Sweet Jayne, which Wood sings over a couple of fiddles plucked simultaneously. Roar it up as a request at their Cork Folk Festival gigs this weekend.
- Mic Moroney