Latest releases reviewed

ÉILÍS KENNEDY One Sweet Kiss Claddagh ***

Second time out of the traps, and Ballydavid's Éilís Kennedy has opted to take her own sweet time. One Sweet Kiss is a languid collection, sweeping into its gabháil everything from the decidedly jaunty An Páistín Fionn to a gorgeous viola-garbed snapshot of a Blasket Island race, Beauty Deas An Oileáin. Scotland features strongly in Kennedy's choice of material, and her take on Farewell to Tarwathie is suitably spare, underscored by Eoin Duignan's low whistle, Tim Edey's phantom-like accordion and William Coulter's guitar. Aillilliú Na Gamhna loses some of its original punch, laden by basslines that dilute rather than concentrate the melody. Dylan's Boots of Spanish Leather tiptoes in between, not so much an interloper as a pitch-perfect tale of migration and loss that finds its share of echoes in west Kerry. www.eiliskennedy.com

Siobhán Long

LUKE KELLY  The Performer Celtic Airs ***

Oddly, the accompanying DVD is far more successful at conjuring the magic of Luke Kelly than this CD collection. Stripped of the accompanying visuals, this gathering falters as it attempts to connect the dots between Mursheen Durkin and Hand Me Down the Bible. For completists, there are robust live performances of songs that needed an audience to oxygenate their blood: Dirty Old Town and The Town I Loved So Well thrive in the broad light of live performance, and the oft-imitated Raglan Road still manages to raise the hairs on the nape of the neck. But ultimately this is a collection that flounders in two dimensions. As an accompaniment to the DVD, it colours and shades. On its own, it quakes in its own boots.

Siobhán Long