North Cregg: ...And They Danced All Night (Magnetic Records)
Emerging from Cork sessions and the Music Department at UCC, this five-piece trad outfit are a hardy-looking shower, with plenty of adrenaline in the breakneck slam of their ensemble. The centrepiece is an exquisite accordionist, Christy Leahy from Carraig na bhFear, filled out by Caoimhin Vallely's fiddle and Paul Meehan's nicely impatient banjo, with some gone-bananas piano and guitars power-housing the rhythm. With Sliabh Luachra somewhere in the background, Leahy has no fear of a polka, and on such tunes, the band migrates into Cajun territory; or on John Neville's songs, into moody MOR folk - the most successful song arrangement is Neville's most traditional-style Pressganged Paddy. Outside of that, these guys are a high-octane beats-per-minute live session band.
By Mic Moroney
Patrick Street: (Green Linnet)
Far skippier than their studio recordings, these renowned veterans - fiddler Kevin Burke, box-player Jackie Daly, ballad-master Andy Irvine and Ged Foley on pacey guitar - present the cherries of last winter's Irish/UK tour. Tight, melodic arrangements, with Irvine winkle-picking the off-beats on the mandolin and blowing the arse out of the harmonica. It's nice to hear Burke out for a walk betimes, while Daly is the steam engine (although mind the head-jerking polkas and the McDermott's set), igniting a fabulous slow-build stringsy Music For A Found Harmonium. Irvine's unmistakable glottis goes for the feeling these days, singing of another political time in The Holy Ground, the slow setting of The Wild Rover, or the complex, grooving lift of Stewball and the Monaghan Grey Mare.
By Mic Moroney
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