The Hour Before Dawn (Shanachie)
The propulsive dance-tune arrangements of this Stateside neo-trad enemble are powerful, with their hyperLunny trans-rhythmic flog undercutting a Hydra-headed build between Winifred Horan's huge, whites-of-the-eyes fiddle; Seamus Egan's richly hyperactive flutes, Mick McAuley's accordions/concertina - all steering corners nicely with the key voices jousting for position in a mesh of tasteful programming. John Doyle's drumtight, jazz-strummed guitar underpins most of it live, and he donates a song, A Miner's Life, near-worthy of Andy Irvine. Sometimes the proceedings recede into flaccidity, and some songs into countrified wallpaper or easy-listening (Bruach na Carraige Baine), but when Deirdre Scanlon takes up the raw When My Love And I Parted, she apple-cores the emotion from it, surely and simply.
Seosamh O hEanai: The Road from Connemara (Clo IarChonnachta)
Quite a package of 33 songs from the great Carna sean nos-er, recorded by Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger in 1964. Heaney's in fine fettle, the coarse internal hum off the voice, the odd bit of lore about black laments of poverty, landlordism or drownings; erotic ditties like Cunnla paired with songs of false young men, but for a rutting Whiskey O Roudeldum-Row. The Irish songs, even the Munster song, Eamonn an Chnoic, are more soulful than those as Bearla, which range from Fenian thigh-slappers to The Valley of Knockanure, or his father's American Civil War song, O Brien from Tipperary. Great wisdom from the labourer who became Merv Griffin's doorman in Amerikay.