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Spectacular sleeve notes herald the arrival of a young sean nós singer with attitude and a sense of time and place in equal measure. Lorcán MacMathúna may not possess the most exceptional voice, and at times he maintains a tenuous connection with conventional notions of tunefulness, but this is a singer with his ear on the prize. He delves so deeply beneath Saileog Rua that he scarcely remembers to come up for air, his voice creaking and groaning with the weight of one long-immersed in the spirit of the song. Gorgeous cello and fiddle (from Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh and Jane Hughes) lend depth and breadth to a vista still in the making. An early snapshot of a vocalist in pursuit of songs that "sing the singer". www.myspace.com/lorcan macmathuna SIOBHÁN LONG

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A touch of cajun invades Beairtle Ó Domhnaill's third solo collection, a curious twist on that peculiar Irish hybrid known as country'n' Irish. It's a quirky slingshot that may succeed in a live setting, but Ó Domhnaill's vocal range clings so desperately to the middle of the road that there's little room for him to invest himself emotionally in his material. Venerable come- all-ye's like Lonely Banna Strand are denuded of their original visceral energy by production values so safe they might be patented by the Health and Safety Authority. Beairtle's choice of Where My Eileen Is Waiting for Me is little more than an ironic reminder of how much better this naive tale has been treated by Johnny McEvoy - decades ago. Genteel jiving fodder, nothing more. www.cic.ie  SIOBHÁN LONG