Reviews

If there is a burden in being the grand-daughter of country music legend Hank Williams, then Holly Williams shoulders it lightly.

Indeed, but for the surname and a touching version of I'm so Lonesome I Could Cry, Williams carries no signs of either false tribute or cynical cash-in. She's not a country music torchbearer for her grandfather's sense of despair, either; rather, her creative stock-in-trade focuses on inter-personal relationships and all the joys, miseries, conflicts and contradictions therein.

Although still a support act (Australian Kasey Chambers was headlining), Williams highlights her sense of ambition through her songs, simple but effective examples of the kind of music that gets heard by virtue of melody line and occasional refreshing turn of phrase. Between Your Lines, I'll Only Break Your Heart, Memory of Me, and Sometimes (where she elegantly references the night her grandfather died) are perfect samples of what Williams has to offer: although there is plenty of this kind of thing floating about, she can twist the obvious to suit her phrasing, individuality, heritage and outlook.

The problem of cross referencing is something that will probably continue until time and a few hit records allow otherwise. No sensible person would expect Holly Williams to even want to emulate the music of a man she has never met; on this showing it's unlikely that will ever happen. She's too much her own person - and that, it seems, is where the family connections start and stop. - Tony Clayton-Lea

Martin Hayes, Dennis Cahill and Andy Irvine

Vicar Street, Dublin

Colin Harper and Trevor Hodgett's Irish Folk, Trad and Blues: A Secret History had its paperback edition well and truly christened by Hayes, Cahill and Andy Irvine. Irvine continues to surprise, slipping in and out of his multiple musical personalities with the ease of a well-practised acrobat. Hot off the heels of a Patrick Street reunion tour, he relished the loneliness of the long-distance troubadour.

Ever the Woody Guthrie disciple, he re-ignited the man's spirit with an eclectic brace of songs, from his signature Guthrie tribute, Never Tire Of The Road to the old Planxty favourite, Kellswater.

Harmonica, guitar and mandolin seldom sound so vital as they do when shoring up such fighting spirits as the Industrial Workers of the World union song, Gladiators, The Blacksmith, and the affectionate My Heart's Tonight In Ireland - a song, which, in anyone else's hands, would reek of sentimental overkill, but somehow in Irvine's fist, perfectly captures the lure of the road.

Colin Reid is a superb Belfast guitarist whose profile is sinfully low round these parts, but his brief interlude, spanning the miserable (or haunting) The Spanish Man and a superb reading of Music For A Found Harmonium was a timely reminder of the often-neglected agility of the six-string guitar.

Hayes and Cahill's belated introduction left us hanging on their every note, and it took a while before they reached their customary boiling point. They demand considerable commitment from their audience, whom they stealthily lure past familiar pitching posts such as Kitty Come Down To Limerick and The Abbey Reel, until they reach their destination, a place where jigs and reels are dissected and reinvented with forensic precision. This is a place where Rakish Paddy roams free, where the arc of Hayes' bow is countered by the minimalism of Cahill's guitar accompaniment, and where even slow airs enjoy a soaring optimism that's the gift of Hayes, and Hayes alone.

And yet, despite the inventiveness of the players, it was a night in which we were in danger of drowning in a sea of musical genius.

Over-abundance can betimes undermine the pleasure of the moment - Siobhán Long