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My Love Lies ***

Debutante Fiona Kelleher has a voice that straddles the upper reaches where Emmylou Harris resides, and where, closer to home, Karan Casey ventures as well. Having taken her time to record, Kelleher's voice is unthwarted by the artifice that can so readily trip up the neophyte. With little more than piano, accordion, guitar and double bass from producer Donald Shaw (with Jim Murray and Ewan Vernal hovering in the ether), Kelleher's voice stands naked, centre stage. Her buoyant cover of Spencer the Rover, long beloved of John Martyn, skips gently over its legend, resisting any temptation to pore excessively over its innards. John Spillane and Louis de Paor's Luíonn Mo Ghráis equally, blissfully bereft: a whisper of a voice as unburdened as a newly minted penny. www.fionakelleher.com

SIOBHÁN LONG

Download tracks: How Could I Live At the Top of a Mountain