ROOTS

Latest CD releases reviewed

HAYSEED DIXIE
Let There Be Rockgrass Cooking Vinyl
***
"There's four key elements in any good mountain song - drinking, cheating, killing and going to hell." So says Barley Scotch, singer, guitarist and fiddler with this faux bluegrass band. Armed with this insight, they noticed that the same attributes ran through AC/DC's music, and so rockgrass was born. Actually the story is more convoluted than that, but is only of interest should these adept cover versions of hard rock standards (Fat Bottomed Girls, Whole Lotta Rosie, etc) done bluegrass-style inspire more than a fleeting smile. John Wheeler is the man responsible for this little diversion, and if the joke wears thin over the length of a full album, in isolation the individual tracks are a good rib-tickler. 
www.hayseeddixie.com
Joe Breen

LONESTAR
Let's Be Us Again BMG
**
This is Nashville quality crossover at its most depressingly efficient. Lonestar are "still just good ole boys from Texas," says singer Richie McDonald, but, along with producer Dan Huff, they have perfected a sophisticated blend of Nashville power pop with more shine than substance. And what substance there is comes wrapped in cloying sentiments and golf club clichés. Just listen beneath the just-right guitar solos and superbly recorded vocals and you will hear the trembling heart of Bush's America, at war with the world but at peace with itself. And, to cap it all, they close with Somebody's Someone, an irritating piece of mawkish reflection on the American "heroes" who have fallen in Iraq. 
www.lonestar.mu
Joe Breen

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Diamond Mountain Sessions Presents Daisy Discs
***
Taking its inspiration from Sharon Shannon's hugely successful Diamond Mountain Sessions CD from 1999, this folk/roots collection is a quirky sidelong glance at a swathe of music that often floats in the ether, without fear of fetter. Essentially, it's a taster that'll either cue its listeners to forage more deeply into the releases of Natalie Merchant, Ger Wolfe, Sinéad O'Connor, The Waifs or Pauline Scanlon, or invoke attention deficit disorder from the sheer, wide girth of it all. Sinéad O'Connor's overwrought take on Paddy's Lamentation rests uneasily alongside The Waifs' louche The Lighthouse and Mundy's startlingly Steve Earlesque Love And Confusion. Damien Dempsey's Apple Of My Eye is a standout. A surface skimmer that's sure to net more than a few converts. 
www.rmgchart.ie
Siobhán Long