Gerdie Commane and Joe Ryan: Two Gentleman of Clare Music (Clachan Music)
This is the first recording by 82-year-old Gerdie from Kilnamona, while Joe, a comparative spring chicken at 71, made the extraordinary Beachaillin Dreoite five years ago. The boys share some tunes, but mostly Gerdie's concertina measuredly, emphatically ekes out melodies alone, full of pared-down ornament, head-turning baroque incidentals of wicked little pipsquirts, like on the Lads of Laois. Ryan drags you off with the faeries with his smeary little high notes, or the wild runs of Sliabh na mBan, but hark his rumbustious prosecution of the Chicago Reel. Eoin O'Neill's bouzouki warms their toes betimes, but the boys are fine, playing music which will utterly bewitch you, if you've a good ear on you at all.
Mic Moroney
Niamh Parsons: In My Prime (Green Linnet)
Parsons taps into some big-emotion music here, many of them hard, shaming ould songs of false young men: the big full, western-accented voice flexing from the sumptous moans of a dying phrase, to whipping muscularity and skipping cadences. Most songs are traditional and taken from Andy Irvine, Jack Harte or Karan Casey: the "deep and false water" of the Lakes of Coolfin, the wicked stir of Bould Doherty, or the chilling title song, spook-duetted with her sister Anne. She gets great backing from the likes of Josephine Marsh, Siobhan Peoples and guitarist Graham Dunne to keep the emotion swelling, while the voice sends goosebumps crawling all over you like harvestman spiders.
Mic Moroney