The Wonders of the World: Dick Hogan (Independent)
It's hard to contain a battered grin at these goatish ould comic songs, with Hogan's nasal vibrato backed by the likes of Steve Cooney (rotund brass band effects on the Percy French tunes, etc.), Seamus Begley, the Voice Squad, Vinnie Kilduff, even RTE Concert Orchestra personnel. The Percy French songs stand up well, alongside great nonsense like The Wonders of the World, while others mightn't escape the PC police (McBreen's Heifer). It's all such a beautiful pisstake (even the pathos of Purty Molly Brannigan: "the place where me heart was, ye'd aisy rowl a turnip in") that, apart from the dramatic irony of Muldoon the Solid Man, it's very hard to sober up for a dead-serious Raglan Road. That said, the rest of it sticks very nicely in your inner ear.
- Mic Moroney
The Clare Hills: Eoghan MacAogain (Suffering Duck Records)
A quiet little album this, of the sort very familiar to anyone taking a wander around the pubs of Clare. It's from a Dublin-born Eb-fluter now resident in Limerick; backed up by Gerry MacNamara on guitar and bouzouki, some nice fiddle touches from Bernie Whelan, Batt O'Connor's guitar/song, and even a didgeridoo. MacAogain does like to play a slow air (eight out of 13 tracks, wisha), while the reels, slip-jigs, hornpipes, etc. are lackadaisical sessions in the main, patiently waiting for lift-off. He composes the title air himself, as well as a couple of reels (Woman on Phone/Fast and Furious), attractive little variations which he rattles off on the whistle. A rather indistinctly mastered album, which is pleasant enough without rattling any tiles off the roof.
- Mic Moroney
Kris Kristofferson: The Austin Sessions (Atlantic)
When a grizzled old songwriter dips into the well of his greatest but long-distant triumphs, it is a fair assumption that something other than great art is the motivation. But not this time. Kristofferson and a rake of well-known and willing voices have combined to instill new life and personality into seasoned classics such as Sunday Morning Coming Down and Me And Bobby Magee, songs so well sung so often that, as Kristofferson remarks, there is nothing left "but bone and sinew". His collaborators include the likes of Jackson Browne, Vince Gill, future visitor Catie Curtis and, surprisingly, Mark Knopfler, but really this is his show and that of the rootsy band producer Fred Mollin assembled. While Kristofferson is no great singer, his gnarled vocals have the character to give these classic slices of ragged humanity a new and welcome twist.
- Joe Breen
Dale Watson and His Lone Stars: People I've Known, Places I've Seen (Continental)
If you like your beer cold and your country straight then Dale Watson is your only man. This could easily be subtitled "more songs about livin', lovin', prisons 'n' truckin' ", because that is generally what occupies our hero. Dale Watson's inspiration ranges from the honkytonks of Texas to the barrooms of Bakersfield. There is nothing diluted or compromised about his songs or his playing of them; his sound is anachronistic, redolent of the 1960s, with low-key short and colourful songs, full of blue-collar gallows humour such as Hey Don (Support My Favourite Beetender). The airbrushed country of Garth Brooks and Shania Twain is derided, compared to "Haggard, Cash, Price and Jones", but Watson and his fellow keepers of the authentic country torch could project themselves better. The production is a little too understated, and many of the songs lack distinction.
- Joe Breen