Susan McKeown: Lowlands (Green Linnet)
Long installed in the East Village, NYC scene, this extraordinary Dublin singer has a keen, chalky voice with an aching directness and chilly little vibrato. It certainly charmed the boyos in Lunasa, who schmaltz around her delicate Fair London Town, while the house band graft flamenco guitars and handclaps on to a cross-rhythmic Slan agus Beannacht. Glen Moore's jazz bass follows her on Nansai Og Ni Obarlain, while more songs are spiced by tablas, kora, and Wang Guowei's erhu behind the Lowlands of Holland, with only a refrigerating wind to intro her naked, heart-slicing take on Liam Weldon's majestic Dark Horse on the Wind. Whoo: seriously, look out for the Cobblestone gig on the 20th.
The Songs of Elizabeth Cronin (Four Courts Press)
This dense two-CD set of 1940s/50s recordings of this legendary singer is part of the exhaustive songbook collected by her grandson, Daithi, with its songs of green linnets, love, laments and nonsense like that child-flinging song Cuckanandy. 'Twas all recorded in her home in Baile Mhuirne by Seamus Ennis, Alan Lomax, Jean Ritchie and the BBC when she was in her 60s and 70s, and the songs are intimately delivered, with the odd crack of a fire or a long-ago horseman passing by. Musing over it, I'll never forgive Rosaleen Linehan for her uncannily accurate reconstruction of a sean noser lamenting Eircom share-prices. But more on Bess Cronin anon.