Sharon Shannon & Friends: The Diamond Mountain Sessions (Grapevine Records)
There must have been great porterhouse parties in Letterfrack while Sharon's "woodchoppers" variously made this luxuriantly unkempt, curiously respectful album of big names and locals. There's Lunny flogging hard behind Carlos Nunez and Sharon on Galician tunes; the roarworthy thrash of Steve Earle's gritty-hearted Galway Girl; Jackson Browne mournsomely returning to California; and John Prine deferring nicely to Mary Staunton. Sharon's instrumental rapport with her sister Mary and fiddlers Liz and Yvonne Kane is often a blessed relief, but things get cheesier: John Hoban's tribute to Van Morrison, or Dessie O'Halloran's incorruptible Inisbofin-American country song - odd collisions, but with a great hairy warmth that can grow all over you.
Tony Small: Galway (Independent)
This Galway balladeer gathers a pride of musicians around him: Verena Commins's uplifting accordion; Tony Geiling's fiddle; engineer Steve Coulter's kalimba; John Dunne's sugary piano; even whistler Sean Ryan who abruptly lifts a beautiful air off into the Galway Rambler. Indeed, Galway's wonders form the spine of these songs, both original and trad - great souvenir-material, although the relentless mythos of Claddagh hurlers and My Own Dear Galway Bay gives me the pip. Despite Small's soulful Moore/Hanly-style delivery, many songs need an intravenous shot of coffee, and yet there's something about the way he slices into the traditional Sporting Races (of Galway) that icily ventilates the marrow of your bones.