Traditional

Liz Doherty: Last Orders (Footstomping Records)

This articulate Buncrana-born fiddler, Bumblebee and UCC music lecturer show-pieces tunes from many sources - Irish, Cape Breton, Orkney, etc - and nicely segues them into mood-switching sets of yowping reels, drowsy hornpipes or key-swerves like that from Hickey's Jig into a minor/gypsique Crabs in the Skillet. Despite their considerable contribution, Ian Carr's busy guitar strum and Ryan MacNeil's O Suilleabhain-coloured piano often harry the solo instrumental feel, and her unaccompanied Maid in Taiwan set works best, showing up the rhythmic tricks and ornamental touches she so assiduously works into tunes. There's a strong Donegal-sy flavour to her bow betimes, although she brings all kinds of accents to strathspeys, Highlands, Cape Breton tunes, etc, with regular vital skips in the tune to keep you well diverted.

Mic Moroney

June Tabor: A Quiet Eye (Topic Records)

This quietly understated, yet highly dramatic Englishwoman's voice slips through the shadows of a sumptuous Creative Jazz Orchestra (on piano and brass, mainly). Dark, dark traditional songs of courtship; Maggie Holland's A Place Called England ("sore abused, but not yet dead"); the raw Edwardian/first World War medley of A Long Way to Tipperary; even a beautiful rendition of that goosebumpy war-time chestnut, I'll Be Seeing You - it's all a strange, chilly paean to an alienated, lost, human Englishness. Other songs are by Richard Thompson, even a low-temperature, almost whispered The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face by Ewan MacColl. Despite some Lloyd-Webberish moments in the orchestration, you are inexorably drawn into this lady's intense and unaffected, slow-release emotional impact.

Mic Moroney