Latest CD releases reviewed

Down in Dublin Blue Navigator
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'Hearing one of Michael Hurley's songs for the first time can seem like you've known it all your life", a perceptive scribe once opined in No Depression, the magazine of all things Americana. Hurley is a sixtysomething American country/folk/blues maverick who has skirted around the mainstream for the past 40 years or so, a peripatetic songster and cartoonist who has kept the business out of his music and in doing so has built up a tiny but fervent following. These include Dubliner Brendan Foreman, who last year pulled this endearingly unkempt session together aided by the Rough Deal String Band. As an antidote to all things slick it has few equals, but Hurley's songs and performance, even his more obscure ramblings, have a deeper resonance in that they are rooted to the great tradition of American folk/country music. Hence the accuracy of the above quote. www.bluenavigator.net - Joe Breen

VARIOUS ARTISTS

The Unbroken Circle - the musican heritage of the Carter Family Dualtone
****

The music of the original Carter Family is key to an understanding of country music, specifically the bluegrass strain. AP Carter, his wife Sara and his sister-in-law Maybelle created a catalogue of songs and a manner of performing them that formed the basis of bluegrass in the 1920s. Many of the songs credited to AP actually had their origins in the "old" countries of Britain and Ireland, but these simple folk tunes of love, death and betrayal, of God, right and wrong, found a receptive ear in the rural poor of the southern US. John Carter Cash, son of Johnny and June and grandson of Maybelle, enlisted the likes of George Jones, John Prine, Emmylou Harris, Del McCoury, Sheryl Crow and others to pay tribute to his forebears. One senses that this was something special for most and the 15 tracks reflect this sense of respect. The times may have changed, but the spirit remains. www.dualtone.com - Joe Breen