Folk

Claire Lynch: "Silver And Gold" (Rounder)

Claire Lynch has spent the last 20 years becoming, as we say in show business, an overnight success. Following hot on the trail trodden by the magical Alison Krauss, she serves up a similar feast of bluegrass and country. However, what sets Ms Lynch apart from the herd is her ability to add that extra dimension of sensitivity and feeling, as on the self-penned title track or the truly haunting Death Angel. This chilling song of anticipated death fits neatly into bluegrass's frame of references - hard work, love, life and God, though not necessarily in that order. However, this is not a bleak collection. Ballads might showcase the appealing ache of Lynch's voice, but there is lots of bright intricate interplay, and tunes to match, to lighten the load.

By Joe Breen

John Spillane: "The Wells of the World"

"Post-modnos" might be the handle for this superb singer-songwriter. Everything's Turning To Gold casts a beam on the Midas-like naivete of the beautiful-people, culture-factory production inherent in Temple Bar-ism, Bank Of Ireland Sean-Nos Blues is the lament of maybe-ifs who hadn't had the nerve to leave the good jobs. Seachtain is dreamy ballad-pop as Gaeilge and, like all the tracks, easily mediated by a musky, moody, sean-nos-informed expertise. Johnny Don't Go To Ballincollig sets the album's mood of questioning complacency, While They're All Talkin' dreams of escape, Not too Bad rounds it up by denouncing the suffocating absence of nerve among "the lads". Instrumental backing is a wonderfully crafted, un-trying traditional/modern melange under the production hand of Declan Sinnott.

By Fintan Vallely

Wynonna: "The Other Side" (Curb)

Now here's a woman with a man-sized voice. Wynonna Judd has grown out of her momma Naomi's shadow into a powerful, almost swaggering, gravel-voiced singer with more taste than most. This lung-buster happily acknowledges the influence of black music on her country roots. There's many a bluesy lick colouring her generally predictable musical landscape, and her voice is as near as a Nashville queen gets to being a blues shouter. She never sounds stretched as she leans into the mostly well-chosen material. Wynonna is at her best when she rocks freely as on the stripped-down duet with her mother, Don't You Throw That Mojo On Me, or the opening When Love Starts Talkin'. The obligatory ballads sound portentous and laboured by comparison. One gets the sense that Wynonna would turn out something very different were she freed from the chains of corporate expectation.

By Joe Breen

Rock/Pop

B.B. King: "Deuces Wild" (MCA)

This album could become one of the most popular blues albums of all time. It certainly deserves to be, given that it walks that delicate line between having massive crossover appeal while at the same time staying totally true to the blues. But then look at the cast list: B.B. King doing classic blues duets with The Rolling Stones, Heavy D, Willie Nelson, Eric Clapton, Bonnie Raitt, Tracy Chapman and Joe Cocker. Obvious from even the opening cut, If You Love Me with Van Morrison, is the genuine love these musicians have for King, their ability to acknowledge his artistry and gracefully enter into his musical space rather than yield to the rock star tendency to hog the spotlight. The entire album is probably the single most celebratory album in the history of the blues. A delight from beginning to end.

By Joe Jackson

Metallica: "Re-Load" (Vertigo)

Just as the title suggests, Metallica's latest album is a repeat of the same form the band displayed on last year's Load. Metallica's music thrives on repetitive riffs and chunky drumbeats, but Re-Load sounds even more tiresome and plodding than usual. James Hetfield's snarling Hell's Angel growl has become a bit irritating, especially his trademark grunt which seems to punctuate each line. Some small relief is provided by Marianne Faithfull, who does a throaty vocal turn on the recent single, The Memory Remains, playing Medusa to Hetfield's Nosferatu. Other tracks like Devil's Dance, Carpe Diem Baby and Bad Seed are your standard Metallica tales from the crypt, and the sense of dead-ja vu is intensified by The Unforgiven II, a sequel to one of the songs on Metallica, aka "The Black Album".

By Kevin Courtney

The Replacements: "All For Nothing/Nothing For All The Best Of The Replacements" (Reprise)

This seminal Minneapolis band was one of the great American underachievers, staggering drunkenly through the Eighties with only a modicum of success. Led by brilliantly talented songwriter Paul Westerberg, and playing a warm blend of punk, country and r & b, The Replacements managed to elbow their way to cult status via such underrated albums as Let It Be, Tim and Pleased To Meet Me. The band nearly broke through in 1989 with the album Don't Tell A Soul, which featured such superb tracks as Achin' To Be, Talent Show and I'll Be You, all of which are included here. This double CD also features such choice cuts as Kiss Me On The Bus, Skyway and Alex Chilton, and it captures the band at its loose, shambolic best, with covers of Dylan (Like A Rolling Pin) Disney (Cruella De Ville) and Hank Mizell (Jungle Rock), plus a totally f***ed-up live version of The Only Ones' An- other Girl, Another Planet.

By Kevin Courtney

Classical/Opera

Bartok: Wooden Prince; Dance Suite. Budapest Festival Orchestra/Ivan Fischer (Philips)

The Wooden Prince is the lightest of Bartok's three stage works and the only one with a happy ending. The scenario by Bela Balazs - in which a princess in a forest initially falls for a prince's puppet rather than the prince who loves her - is intended to reflect "the pain and glory of the situation in which a woman prefers the poem to the poet, the picture to the painter". The Wooden Prince is one of Bartok's most impressionistic scores, as interesting for its nature painting as for its vivid depiction of the picturesquely grotesque (there's a malevolent fairy in this particular forest). Ivan Fischer secures gorgeously-coloured, high-tension playing and delivers the Dance Suite in fine style, too.

By Michael Dervan

Kevin Volans: Pieces for wind ensemble. Peter Donohoe (piano), Netherlands Wind Ensemble, Wim Steinmann, Daniel Harding (Chandos)

According to the South African-born, Dublin-resident Kevin Volans. "The colour of the instruments . . . is as important for the meaning of the music as the pitch, or the rhythms, or anything else". The pieces here range from a quiet, untitled, Feldmannish elegy for piano and offstage wind, to the bright and often shrill Concerto For Piano And Wind Instruments. However, the refined textural and colouristic sensibility of Volans' "hand-made" minimalist-flavoured writing is best heard in the arrangements, This Is How It Is and Leaping Dance and the chamber-scaled Walking Song.

By Michael Dervan

Pavarotti: "The Ultimate Collection" (Decca, 2 CDs)

Roberto Alagna: "Serenades" (EMI)

The pretenders to the tenor throne keep coming up with deft little jabs to the jugular, like this clever collection of songs from Roberto Alagna, while all the king of the high Cs can do to fend them off, it seems, is churn out yet another repackaging of what is essentially The Essential Pavarotti. Give the discs a spin, however, and suddenly things aren't so simple. Alagna's choice of material is usually inspired, and Serenades is no exception; a judicious mix of the popular, the operatic and the outright unusual - but, possibly in an effort to create an informal, unpolished effect, he ends up sounding considerably less mellifluous than usual. Pavarotti, meanwhile, is as smooth as silk - no surprises, unless you count the addition of tracks featuring Frank Sinatra, Cecilia Bartoli and Andrea Bocelli, but no disappointments, either.

By Arminta Wallace