The latest releases reviewed.

NO CROWS At the Strand Live Whirling Discs ****

The melting pot that is No Crows borrows from the cosmopolitanism of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra and Loyko's innovations (with just a tincture of the freewheeling of Django Reinhart) for their debut. Sligo-based, and populated by Mallorcan guitarist Felip Carbonnel, cellist Anna Houston, double bassist Eddie Lee and Waterboys lynchpin Steve Wickam on fiddle, No Crows tread a jagged-edged and picaresque pathway through a repertoire pinched from across eastern and southern Europe, alighting on Sharon Shannon's Portugese adoptee, Corridinho, and making it their own. They achieve a remarkably orchestral sound on Szhôck, a slow waltz of puzzling parentage (either Romanian or Bulgarian). What could so easily have been magpie music for those with Attention Deficit Disorder is reined in tight by the quartet's. Swing rarely felt this good. www.rmgchart.ie Siobhán Long