Roots/Traditional

Tommy Fleming: "Restless Spirit" Dara/RTE

The emotional attack of Fleming's high, textured voice, over Arty McGlynn's guitars and the sonic carpet of Rod McVeigh's keyboards, puts him in the Mary Black/Chris de Burgh school of slow-set, open-heart folk. The songs, all borrowed, are complaints of urban blues or, more often, the heartache of lost relationships. Fleming has a taste for John Gorka's mixed metaphors (Love is our Cross to Bear) and the sentimental despair of Lowen/Navarro songs. Closer to home, there's In the Gloaming with Nollaig Casey's fiddle; or his unusual, feeling cover of Dick Farrelly's Isle of Inisfree. Otherwise, the music lacks fibre, but the voice is strong, committed and just Irish enough to make it popular.

Mic Moroney

Various Artists: "Tammy Wynette Remembered" (Asylum)

To enjoy country music one must have an appetite for excess. This essentially simple music has been embellished with strings, draped in emotion, coated in saccharin and topped with tinsel. Yet because of, as much as in spite of, its honest garishness the best of country retains a peculiar, rugged integrity. This impressive and deserving tribute to the late Tammy Wynette falls into this category. The irony of Elton John's Stand by your Man is set beside the drama of ex-husband George Jones's heartfelt Take me to your World or the stunning ballad of Trisha Yearwood's Til I get it Right. Roseanne Cash breathes new life into D.I.V.O.R.C.E., likewise the precocious Sara Evans on I Don't Wanna Play House. There are a few over-the-top efforts, but without them it would hardly be a fitting country tribute.

Joe Breen

Mike Ireland and Holler: "Learning how to Live" (Independent)

Close your eyes and slip away to the late 1960s and Hickery Holler's string-section cuts in to colour another tale of woe and deception. Kansas City singer Mike Ireland has an unfashionable fascination for the sound made popular and profitable by Billy Sherrill in Nashville about 30 years ago. Ireland writes and sings songs of loneliness and regret, of bitterness and pain, but though couched in the styles of yesteryear tracks such as House of Secrets, Worst of All, and Cold Cold Comfort have the ring of beer-smelling roadhouse authenticity. Ireland uses strings carefully, preferring to allow this nicely understated debut to display his and his band's command of many different traditional country styles. While his hard-edged, twangin' voice strikes just the right note, some of the songs could be stronger, though the penultimate Cry and the closing title track are almost as good as it gets.

Joe Breen