Latest CD releases reviewed

LORI MCKENNA
Bittertown CRS
***

Lori McKenna hails from the town of Stoughton, Massachusetts. She is married to her childhood sweetheart, a plumber with whom she has had four children, and she drives her own tour bus. So this is not the glamour side of the American Dream. But it is an honest, moving and spirited espousal of "life with one man" in "this blue collar town of ours". McKenna is a late convert to folk-rock singer-songwriting; this is her fourth album but the first I've heard. Powered by her acoustic guitar, her edgy voice sings of the good, the bad and the painful in a relationship born and raised in a hard town. The album's tracklisting is not as given on the sleeve, but the actual closing song, If You Ask, is a telling conclusion, while the opener, Bible Song, sets the scene powerfully. In between her touch can be a little less assured, but this is still a woman worth noting. www.lorimckenna.com

Joe Breen

VARIOUS ARTISTS
The Rough Guide to Cajun Dance Rough Guide 
****

This brings back fond memories of an amazing night in New Orleans's "Rock N Bowl" some years ago. The venue was home to some very determined bowlers and even more determined Cajuns, or would-be Cajuns, who defied the din of the balls one floor below to dance enthusiastically to the waltzes, jigs and two-steps prompted by the band's fiery playing. This collection may not have the same live feel but, as ever with Rough Guide albums, it's a quality production with acts such as Steve Riley & the Mamou Playboys, D.L. Menard and Beausoleil among the performers on the 17 tracks. Dancing is an integral part of Cajun music and an important element of Cajun culure. But most of all it is great and infectious fun.  www.worldmusic.net

Joe Breen

ALBERT NILAND
Downtown Exit RMG
**

Someone should tell him to put the brakes on. After his exceedingly fine début last year, replete with Spanish guitar as intricate as a spider's web, the Galwegian singer/songwriter has rushed headlong into the studio as if to overtake that difficult second album syndrome before it gets lodged in the back of the sofa. Niland has jettisoned his Spanish guitar and replaced it with vocals more tortuous than tortured, and with a set list that's as crazily mixed up as a 13-year-old on hormonal overdrive. His cover of Wuthering Heights transforms Ms Bush's featherlite original into a rough-hewn, monotonous rumble. Niland's own material suffers from an identity crisis of equally gargantuan proportions. A tad longer honing clumsy lyrics and tweaking the band's sound wouldn't have gone amiss.  www.albertniland.com

Siobhán Long