Cherish The Ladies: "Threads Of Time" (BMG)
Although Eileen Ivors and Winifred Horan have departed, this New York alllassie trad outfit is doing very well. No great surprises here: trim sessions which run around in circles as they build a head of steam. Best are the individual moments: superluminary fluter/whistler Joanie Madden, with a touch of the James Galway; Siobhan Egan's bright, seductive fiddle; Mary Rafferty's drumtight accordion. They're moving towards Clannad/Carpenters harmonies with Aoife Clancy's songs: love laments (the traditional Napoleonic Bonnie Light Horseman is powerful) and Yeats poems set to traditional airs, or indeed Clancy's own. Keen as these are, by the time she arose to go to Inishfree, I was looking for the exit. As usual there's a spot of step-dancing in the background, and very pleasant it is, too. Mic Moroney
Emmylou Harris: "Spyboy" (Grapevine)
In theory this should be a holding album, a staging post between Emmylou's rebirth on the epic Wrecking Ball collection and her long-awaited next step. Being a queen (of country music), she has her own regal recording pace, but the promotion tour she launched with Buddy Miller, Brady Blade and Daryl Johynson, aka Spyboy, clearly took on a life of its own. Anyone who was lucky enough to see it when the show passed through Dublin will testify that this was no mere pickup band for a spent singer and her past memories. Great singers can reinvent great songs, to great reward, when pushed. If aided and abetted by someone as talented as guitarist Buddy Miller, the magic becomes almost commonplace. This live album records it faithfully. Joe Breen
Hector Zazou: "Lights In The Dark" (Warner/Detour)
In keeping with "arribient" remixes of Gregorian choirs and medieval nuns, Hector Zazou put together this catchy, spaced-out "journey to the source of sacred Irish song". The Passion laments, hymn-poems and old Donegal carols are eerily traditional, suspended in a mist of echoes, loops and samples; and accompanied by stone riffs on harp, oud, zither, hurdygurdy, ocarina (Carlos Nunez) and Mark Isham's heavenly trumpets. The three main singers have powerful moments: Breda Mayock on Caoineadh na dtri Mhuire; Katie McMahon's Seacht Suailce na Maighdine Muire and the almost erotic wakesong, sung-whispered by Lasairfhiona N Chonaola. It puts me in mind of Peadar O Riada, Iarla O Lionaird and even Maire Brennan: native choirs, the mix of pagan and Christian folk religion in an intimate, eccentric, electronic chill-out. Works well. Mic Moroney
