Piano accordion is a rare sight in traditional music these days, it does not have the stylistically-favoured, "press and draw" rhythm of its widely-popular, button-note relative. Alan Kelly challenges the model, achieving the favoured style on a short instrument by utilising a mix of finger-tip tripletting, adjacentkey ornament, held notes, volume-variation and minimal bass. Use of thumb demands extrovertly rocking the wrist, a rhythmic spidering up and down the keyboard that adds to his performance a mesmerising visuality which enhances the music. From the first introduction by Frank Kilkelly's superb guitar backweave on the Piper's Despair reels, through Rakes Of Westmeath slip jigs, the French-Canadian Fleur De Mandragore and magnificent, bag-piping Reel De Pointe-au- Pec, to the final Easy Club reel, this was a brilliantly talented, effortless and exuberant performance. James Blennerhasset's double bass - played, uniquely, almost melodically - funkily mediated the crossed cultures, and Cathal Hayden's fiddle took all to a great soaring and swooping, particularly on the intense Boys Of The Lough and Faral O'Gara solo. If at moments his Bluegrassiness and swing with Kilkelly's vocal evoked the now-defunct Four Men and a Dog, the night was still the Roscommon accordionist's.
Tunes by Brendan Mulvihill, Mick Dwyer, Arty McGlynn, Frankie Gavin and Sean Ryan sat easy with older pieces such as Berehaven Lassies and Tar Road To Sligo, this making the native material the comfortable setting to display, understand and appreciate the Irish/Scots-Canadian European melange.
