Simon Thoumire: "Three March Strathspey & Surreal"
Green Linnet, GLCD 1191 (47 mins) Dial a track: 1641
When traditional music leaves home for good it often arrives on Green Linnet's doorstep, where it is refiled under "Celtic" and given a new purpose in life. So with Simon Thoumire, (filed under "Celtic/Scotland") an enfant terrible with a concertina and an attitude. Titles like Gloomy go Round /Merry Go Round and the eponymous title track do nothing to dispel initial misgivings about the content. The aforementioned "Gloomy go Round..." is part Miles Davis, part traditional and wholly directionless. Thoumire is assisted on the album by bassist Simon Thorpe and Kevin McKenzie on guitar - musicians who display no audible traditional sympathies, the least that is required for this kind of enterprise. The furious repetitive riffing and the straining pyrotechnics are depressingly unmusical.
Thoumire, despite his credentials (early apprenticeship to a piping master/ winner of the Radio 2 Young Tradition award, virtuoso technique) plays as if he has never really listened to traditional music. If he had, then he would have understood that it will not be shotgunned into a loveless marriage without protesting horribly, which it does most dolefully on many tracks of this album.
This is a pity because here and there (e.g. Miss Laura Thoumire) can be discerned a sensibility that, if allowed to develop, promises more than this redundant jazz/trad melange can ever do.
Cherish the Ladies: "New Day Dawning"
Green Linnet, GLCD1175 (56 mins) Dial a track: 1751
A new vocalist Aoife Clancy, Donna Long on piano and fiddle, and Mary Rafferty on accordion and whistle, now augment the Cherishes base lineup of Joanie Madden, Siobhan Egan and Mary Coogan. A formidable collective CV made up of championship titles, recordings, and impressive family lineages in traditional music makes for an accomplished and lively album. Vivacious playing characterises all of the best instrumental tracks, most memorably Rayleens Reel/ The Pullet Scotch Mary/ Within a Mile From Dublin, which kicks off gently with a slow reel (composed by fiddler Siobhan Egan) before leaving the ground. Fiddle, mandolin, box, flute, whistle, and guitar scamper gaily through a set of polkas. The Green Cottage/ Jer O'Connell's/ Tom's Tavern/ Cmwley's Reels/ Tom Ward's Downfall is an exuberant free fall of percussive piano chasing banjo, fiddle, box, and flute.
Drumshanbo Traditional Music Group: "Rolling in the Ryegrass"
Mayflower MFCD 1008
Dial-a-track: 1861
The counties of Roscommon and Leitrim, sources of a rich seam of traditional music, feature on this album recorded by local musicians from the town of Drumshanbo. The ensemble of flute, accordion, fiddle, harp, guitar and bodhran, favour, as well they might, the repertoire of masters of the north western style, players such as John "Fireman" McKenna and Johns Joe Gardiner. One of them even makes a posthumous contribution to the album. The slow air An Tostal included here is apparently the last known recording made by the late Josie McDermott, and introduced by himself as an entry for a festival competition. The selections of reels, jigs, polkas and the unusual barndance The Ballroom Favourite bespeak strong local affinities, as do songs like My lovely Leitrim Shore, while the delightful Knickers of Corduroy with its echoes of music hall was gleaned from the singing of Maighread Ni Dhomhnaill.
"The Collected Compositions of Reevy" (3 cassettes/2 books)
Green Grass Music/Drumshanbo
Two years shy of Ed Reevy's centenary comes this comprehensive collection of his notated tunes in two books with accompanying tapes edited by his son Joe. Ed Reevy, who emigrated to Philadelphia from Barnagrove, Co Cavan, was an accomplished fiddler who recorded in the 1920s before embarking on a lifelong enterprise of tune composition. Many of his works have slipped into the tradition, sometimes unacknowledged. Here are the results of a 30 year task undertaken by Joe Reevy - a labour of love if ever there was one.
