Andy Irvine: Way Out Yonder (Independent)
Musing from Down Under, the Noam Chomsky of Irish balladry slices into some raging, open-heart ballads here, both traditional and his own, like his plain-speaking song about the Australian Wobbly anti-conscription campaign. Accompanying himself as usual on mandolin/bouzouki/big dirty harmonica, he's backed by a rogue's gallery of Rens van der Zalm, Steve Cooney, Liam O'Flynn, Cormac Breathnach, Dermot Byrne and more; revisiting Balkan tunes, and chiselling out a new motherlode of sung literature: The Girl I Left Behind, the brilliant moral teaser of Marcus Turner's When the Boys Are On Parade, or his great honest Carrick- fergus, ethnic cleansing remembered from the far distant lens of Brisbane. A bloody masterpiece.
Padraigin Ni Uallachain: An Irish Lullaby (Shanachie)
Apart from Padraigin's own songs, and her late sister Eithne's sweet, simple Codail go Suan, you could frighten the wits out of a child with these old "lullabies" of faeries, hags and abductions, for all the quasinaive child-voice. Enriched by Maire Breatnach, Nollaig Casey, Deirdre Brady's flute, Helen Davies' harp, Garry O Briain and Ronan Browne, this South Armagh woman even has Mairtin O'Connor wheezing around behind a Connemara song. The airs have more substance when the hubby, Len Graham, hums a drone, and Ho a Bhain applies the ice-pack to the spine nicely. Otherwise, my favourite kid's trad album remains Cooney's Rabhlai Rabhlai with Dingle Irish-speakers some time ago.