Jacqueline McCarthy: The Hidden Note (Maree Music)
The concertina, that mysterious little lap-borne tool, can be a wonder in the hands of this lady from a London-Irish family who regularly performed with Bobby Casey. She revisits all that in unison with her father Tommy's concertina, Tommy Jnr and Bernadette's fidili and Marion's pipes. She also duets with the father, who injects a whole internal ticking system of off-rhythms, almost from other time signatures - a restless, piping-style shoulder-nudging on the chord buttons which deeply pervades her own style. Piper Tommy Keane duets with her too, but even better is the needlework she shares with Alec Finn, who buoys up her constant, spontaneous swellings and squirtings around the shape of the tunes. Lovely indeed.
- Mic Moroney
Various Artists: The County Bounds (Ossian Records)
There's very strange magic and memory at work along the Cork-Kerry border, and this powerful album, culled from the Sean O Riada Conference, is a motherlode, mainly from Sliabh Luachra and Muscrai. Paudie O'Connor's ferocious accordion and Johnny O'Leary's piping, jerking button-box sprays sit up alongside Jackie Daly's nimble paws. Fiddlers include Maire O'Keeffe, Matt Cranitch, and Connie O'Connell, scaring hell out of a polka. There's a clutch of O Suilleabhains singing songs and two-hander luibin routines. And where would you be without Peadar O Riada's grandiloquent piano announcing the rough-hewn Cuil Aodha choirboyos? Good company, tempests of applause, knowing ripples of mirth: If you're mad into the music, this'll blow your mind gently, circuit by circuit.
- Mic Moroney