Sandy Denny: "Gold Dust Live at the Royalty" (Island)

Who knows where time goes: it is hard to believe that Sandy Denny is dead 20 years, last April 21st to be exact. When she died aged 31 from injuries sustained in a fall, the music world mourned but not for long. Denny's time had apparently come and gone. From the heady highs of prime time Fairport Convention, she had stumbled through a solo career of great promise but little reward. When this 1977 collection was recorded she was unsure and nervous, suspicious of a world newly changed by punk-charged energy and attitude. Yet the music on this superbly re-engineered budget-priced album, subtitled the final concert, is mostly timeless. The grace and danger of her voice as she eases her way into the concert is striking, her trademark emotional intensity compensating for any rough edges. She could melt the hardest heart - and still does - and this collection is a mighty addition to her legacy.

Joe Breen

The Bothy Band: "Live in Concert" (BBC/Strange Fruit)

Nope, not a reunion gig, but after the reissue of Skara Brae, another window into the musical past of Triona and Micheal O Domhnaill, with high quality live recordings from 1976 and 1978 from this seminal trad-revival outfit. The Bothys were lit up by extraordinary individual talents: the O Domhnaills' songs ; the seductive lilt of Kevin Burke's fiddle; the rapid, purling rolls of Matt Molloy's flute; and pipers Peter Brown and Paddy Keenan - the latter shaking the foundations of the Kilburn National with his riotous rendering of The Bucks of Oranmore. The mighty session power of the band was underpinned by Triona's clavinet and Micheal's guitars, but the essential ingredient was the choppy bouzouki textures and arrangements from Donal Lunny.

Mic Moroney

Liam O'Flynn: "The Piper's Call" (Tara Records)

The mature O'Flynn piping style is a refined and stately thing, and this meditative fifth solo album sees him out with Mark Knopfler and Galician piper, Carlos Nunez; great session men, Matt Molloy, Sean Keane, the pace-pushing Steve Cooney and Arty McGlynn; with Micheal O Suilleabhai n and the Irish Chamber Orchestra thrown in on one track. As such, with little need of the chord-barps of the regulators, O'Flynn concentrates on his beautifully controlled chanter work. The best tunes kick up their heels a bit, like McKenna's Reels and The Humours of Carrigaholt, showing O'Flynn's authority on the pipes at its most gorgeously alert; wrestling with Nunez in the jig-like muineiras; or the madness of Keane's fiddle cutting across The Gold Ring. It has its own moods and humours, but like the pipes themselves, this album very much grows on you.

Mic Moroney