Releases > Releases September 2025

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ANDREW CADEN & CONOR McDONAGH
Across the Atlantic
Racket Records RR019, 16 Tracks, 49 Minutes
www.racketrecords.bandcamp.com
The enduring power and beauty of Sligo sourced Irish traditional music is brought to life on this album from Killavil flute player Conor McDonagh and fiddler Andrew Caden, who comes from Bethesda, Maryland. Over a hundred years ago Sligo masters like Michael Coleman made their way to the east coast of America and planted a stock of Sligo tunes in the New World. Both musicians can trace their mentoring provenance to those Sligo pioneers through generations of teachers who have passed on the pure drop.
The pair are accompanied by Catherine McHugh and Ryan Sheridan on keyboards and John Blake on the Greek Bouzouki, he also recorded and mixed the album, which was produced by John Carty.
There’s bouncing energy on John McKenna’s/John’s Hard Jig. Flute and fiddle bubbling with a sympathetically eager piano. Transitions between the melodies are seamless, urging the tunes onward. In Chalk Sunday/The Maid On The Wall, the flute becomes the prominent carrier of the tune, the piano holding a bass line with connecting tenor motion. Listen to the hornpipes: Galway Bay and Jim Coleman’s with their pulsing punch, Coleman’s more florid in its flute trills. There are reels here, the Belles of St. Louis and Sean Maguire’s, an old style bodhrán accompaniment following each and every hillock and hollow in the tune. The drum skin is kept tight, there’s no distracting resonance from a booming bottom end, keeping the fiddle and flute sparky and happily at home in their top registers.
There’s a flute solo on the Widow’s Daughter with piano accompaniment. For earthy fiddling I suggest you study The Pullets Want a Cock, with its darker tone, the fiddle rasping and intentional, with a long nyah on the leading phrases.
You’ll have to pinch yourself at times to realise we are in the 21st century. Across The Atlantic sounds like it came out of New York in 1922. There’s no better recommendation.
Seán Laffey

EILIDH SHAW & ROSS MARTIN
Stay Here All Night
Rhubana Records RRCD002, 11 Tracks, 45 Minutes
www.eilidhshawrossmartin.com
West Highland fiddler Eilidh Shaw is probably best known for her time with The Poozies and more recently with Shooglenifty, but she and guitarist Ross Martin have been a duo for many years. This is their second album, following on from the almost louche brilliance of their debut Birl-Esque. They are joined here by many guests to create a delightfully varied and engaging sound across four songs and seven instrumentals, blending Scottish tradition with contemporary folk from both sides of the Atlantic.
The most striking thing about Stay Here All Night for me is the warmth, the welcoming inclusivity of this music, which wraps itself round you like a woollen blanket and invites you in for tea, or soup, or possibly a dram of something stronger. The songs are gentle yet intimate: watching a lover asleep in the firelight, weeping vulnerable tears as life becomes almost not worth living, the bittersweet blues of recollections in Stoned Again, and the surreal imaginings of a perfect relationship in Two Lighthouses.
That easy familiarity also embraces the tunes, a mix of Gaelic classics and new compositions. The funky teasing of Jen & Arnaud’s, and the robust Swimmy Tunes riding effortlessly over a horn section and drum kit arrangement, fit smoothly with sets of big pipe jigs and melancholy Hebridean waltzes. Strathspeys and reels showcase delicate fingerpicked guitar as well as fiery fiddle. Stay Here All Night closes with one of my favourite modern Scottish waltzes, Sileas by Dougie Hunter (written for his dog I believe), a relaxed end to a richly rewarding album.
Alex Monaghan

JOCELYN PETTIT & ELLEN GIRA
Here to Stay
Own Label, 11 Tracks, 47 Minutes
www.jocelynpettit.com
Tunes and songs rooted in Celtic music with a North American accent, this is the second album from British Columbia fiddler Jocelyn Pettit and Maryland cellist Ellen Gira. Their first was excellent, and Here to Stay follows suit. The duo’s repertoire is wide and varied, a mix of Canadian and Scottish material with a touch of Nordic and several of their own compositions.
There are five vocal tracks: one traditional song and two newly composed, plus modern mouth music on Harald Haugaard’s catchy 5/4 tune Passport Ljubljana and Mona MacIsaac’s March by Pettit. The other six tracks are instrumental, from reels to waltzes, all cello and fiddle duets with occasional guitar from Everest Witman and a spot of bodhrán from Oisín Hannigan on the final number. Jocelyn also adds foot percussion and her fine version of Cape Breton step-dancing.
Opening with a quiverful of Québécois reels, fiddle and cello fire up Jocelyn’s bouncy Canadian jig Mettabee Hill and the old strathspey Rothiemurchus Rant before the joyous Midnight Ceilidh. In a quieter section, the first song is a strong New England version of the Child ballad best known as Scarborough Fair. It’s followed by Ian Stephenson’s gentle Return from Helsinki, and another departure song by Ellen. Maurice Lennon’s Tribute to Larry Reynolds and Jerry Holland’s Reel for Carl inject great energy before the closing waltz and song-jig combo to end a beautifully balanced collection of first class music.
Ellen and Jocelyn travel widely, in Europe and North America, so there’s a good chance you can catch their impressive live performances too.
Alex Monaghan

KATE RUSBY
When They All Looked Up
Pure Records PRCD 80, 11 Tracks, 43 Minutes
www.katerusby.com
Within the course of her three-decade long recording career, Kate Rusby’s music has covered many bases from the purely acoustic sounds of Hourglass, and Sleepless, to bigger productions with brass bands and electronics. This is as much a reflection of her own ideals, the treatment of the source material, and the company she keeps including producer/ partner Damien O’Kane. Her latest studio album, When They All Looked Up, is something of a halfway mark between the completely acoustic backings of Hourglass and Sleepless and full plugged-in electrics of Make the Light and Hand Me Down.
Her new album is an eclectic collection of songs, some traditional, some self-penned, and some from outside. Lyrically and vocally, she excels in story songs in the dramatic ballad form like Ettrick and The Girl with the Curse and the wistfulness of The Moon Man. Traditional songs, Judges and Juries and Master Kilby, the latter a homage to her hero Nic Jones, are stripped right down to the emotional core of their stories. These add some weighty encounters with deeper social marshlands found in Kay Sutcliffe’s still relevant 80s poem Cole not Dole, and The Girl with the Curse, the latter self-penned - both are stand outs. These are contrasted with some exuberant moments in How the World Goes and some surprisingly left field contributions as in The Barnsley Youth and Temperance Society’s hilarious adventures composed by Shay Healy as related by Sean Cannon, and they offer some light relief as does the tale of The Yorkshire Couple.
Vocally she has gained in confidence and range, displaying a mature sensitivity that yields to the material’s demands, making for some commanding performances. When They All Looked Up is an agile display of vocal power and interpretative skill. For me it is the best of her latter-day efforts.
John O’Regan

MICHAEL DARCY & THE ATLANTIC TRAMPS
Homemade
12 Tracks, 47 Minutes
www.michaeldarcy.bandcamp.com/album/homemade
A few traditional folk songs and more of Michael’s originals are presented in a truly authentic Irish style. Michael has been flying the flag for Irish song in his adopted Canada for the last 15 years; he sings with a voice that sounds like he arrived yesterday. You can judge this by listening to Crooked Jack and the Mickey Dam, both about emigrating for work in the 1950s, both, I’m sure, resonating with his own urge to move away.
He looks back to what he left on both Wild West Clare and Long Summer Days in a poetic postcard to his past, remembering what it was like to be a child in an uncomplicated rural world. The Atlantic Tramps here provide fiddle and banjo to give it that truly west of Ireland feeling.
Darcy has a way with words, he’s able to turn a phrase, and a coddle as catchy line to hook us into a song’s characters. On Reckless Road, which is about a man who seeks solace in a bar when his wife leaves, we have the line: “I’m searching for truth in a bar full of lies”. Bar culture is at the heart of June or December, weeks of late night lock-ins and singing sessions, so much so that the musicians don’t know if today is June or December. Realising half of the year has gone by, he sings, “we’ve passed the sweet spot where the pause button breaks”.
If I have a favourite song it is: Until The Devil’s Paid. The subject is serious, his writing is razor sharp and the melody holds it together absolutely. He sings of homelessness, a blight on any modern society. The locale might be Canada, it could be Cabra or Kanturk: “just how many wrong turns does it take to fall homeless on Hastings Street…how many souls get sacrificed until the Devil’s paid?”
Michael pays his dues to the ballad tradition, to the art of songwriting, and if you are looking for an Irish voice with words that make you listen and think, pay Homemade a visit.
Seán Laffey

SARAH-JANE SUMMERS & JUHANI SILVOLA
How To Raise The Wind
Eighth Nerve Audio, 7 Tracks, 41 Minutes www.sarahjanejuhani.com
Summers’ Scottish fiddling embraces a boreal spirit with Norwegian guitarist Juhani Silvola in a suite of music that exploits the full dynamics and possibilities of the ensemble. Sarah-Jane isn’t the only fiddler, there are four other violinists too.
The work was commissioned for Nordlysfestivalen 2022 (The Northern Lights Festival, Tromsø). The brief: to write original music for a string quintet and a traditional duo. They took inspiration from Highland folk tales and this shows in the extent of the writing, some tracks exceed 7 minutes, one runs to 10.
There aren’t that many miles from Norway to Scotland, the Vikings often used to visit by sail boat, yet there’s an inherent strangeness in the Nordic muse, and Sarah-Jane is totally invested in a new kind of sonic envelope. The Enchanted Sons of Kings features a free form fiddle, yet it ends with breathy bottle top of a flute scraping the way home.
The Coriolis Effect is a chance for Silvola to bathe in the limelight, picking out a tune on the guitar before he is left behind when a cello muscles in. This is the most accessible track, short too at 4 minutes, ending with a baroque crescendo, one for Lyric FM Radio in Ireland.
The final and title track How to Raise the Wind, is based on a model taken from Gaelic song, and is the most Scottish of the tracks. The fiddle almost snaps as a long sliding glissando overwhelms it, the mood shifts as the cello takes up the gently rocking motif. The piece takes another shift with wispy ethereal sounds floating high above us until the darkness descends once again in a maelstrom of foreboding. The initial tune surviving the tide and bobbing back to the surface before a tinkling ease lays itself on the album.
Seán Laffey

CLEMENTINE LOVELL
Westbound
Own Label, 10 Tracks, 46 Minutes
www.clementinelovell.com
Westbound is an album of original songs by Clementine Lovell. Folksy, contemporary, innovative, the album was produced by Marion Fleetwood, and engineered and mastered by Paul Johnston at Rhythm Recording Studios.
Lovell, as lead vocalist and accordion player, is joined by some stellar musicians. The album is a fine piece of work, deserving of public performance and air play. Land Army Girl is a delightful love poem: familiar theme, farm boy meets city girl, they fall in love regardless of class (or in this case a mother’s plan), in post-war rural England: “they met down at the village dance, she wore a dress of blue, he fell in love at first sight, somehow he just knew”, with rhyming couplets to a sweet melody, a beautiful story.
The album is dedicated to Roger Lovell, in memory of Monica, themed around family, motherhood, friendship, love, loss and life lessons learned. Cottontail Hunting, a bluegrass-y vibe, remembering, celebrating childhood pursuits: “our fresh youthful gaze never failed to amaze us”, boys out hunting with nets, harmless fun, halcyon days, into adolescence, finding love and perhaps losing it: “I know that it’s lost all that time in the past”, the poet consoling, empathetic, “I’m still here behind you, you know where to find me”. Another strong storyline, clever arrangements, fiddle, innovative percussion and the harmonica earning its keep.
Sister, another reflective piece, sisters on parting, questioning if, “is it blood that binds us or memory, or just the way you’re so like her”. In mourning for their mother, they use her nurturing to nurture each other, “I’ll be mother to you, you’ll be mother to me”, sweet and tender with Duncan Menzies on banjo and fiddle. Here A Moment is vocally assured, with Robbie K. Jones on cajon and banjo, producer Marion Fleetwood on backing vocals.
Anne Marie Kennedy

KYLE CAREY
The Last Bough
10 Tracks, 35 Minutes www.kyleannecarey.com
This album encapsulates Kyle’s recent life changes including motherhood and her roots in the Vermont woods. Written over three years through the pandemic, pregnancy and a first year of living with a new baby in a handmade and homemade tiny-house-on wheels.
We’ve been following Kyle for years and our regular readers will recall how impressed we’ve been with her work. This album is at another level, there’s a maturity, wisdom and lived experience in her new songs. Her backing musicians add depth and texture here; they include Jamie Dick (percussion), Christian Sedelmeyer (fiddle), Sam Howard (upright bass), Mike McGoldrick (whistle & flute) and Anthony DaCosta (guitar).
The song, The Last Bough begins with a finger-plucked steel-strung guitar, followed by Mike McGoldrick on the flute; the recording shimmers at this point like light glinting off a mirror. Kyle’s voice is dramatically fragile, investing emotional intelligence in the art of song as communication. On Theia’s Gaze, the bass comes to the front and the drums are brushed gently, it’s all so subtle. The song speaks of landscape and weather and the “blush of a blackbird”. It holds onto a romantic central instrumental section with the wordless harmonies of another voice the background. Sere The Wind is counted in, “1,2,3,” as Kyle describes the fall of the year and the fractured promise of Autumn, a perfect song for September.
The tenth track Amour Mystique, a French title yes, but this is an outlier. Beginning with an incoherent jumbled cadence of electronic sounds, Kyle pulls it together, puts a shape and order on the song, her voice reverberating almost to an echo, wordless harmonies again keep it calm until the final section and the return of entropy. And you know life is often like that.
Seán Laffey

RAVENGALE
Don’t Wake the Day
Own Label, 10 Tracks, 38 Minutes ravengaleband@gmail.com
In the dim and distant 70’s, Limerick singer songwriter/guitarist Ger Costelloe took the hippy trail to London, Crete, and Amsterdam, absorbing musical influences as well as life experiences. Returning to Limerick in 1977, he hooked up with Tom Jones, Brian Healy and Eddie Clancy to form Ravengale. Playing locally, they fused Costelloe’s blues and folk roots with rock, soul, reggae, psychedelia and new wave to make an identifiable stylistic sound. They opened for Joe O’Donnell’s Vision Band and The Cimarrons among others on Limerick’s Savoy stage with forays for gigs in Tralee and Cork. Later Christy Moore covered Ger’s song The Dying Soldier on Ride On, and Ger’s solo album Letting in Water developed his creative muse.
Fast forward to 2021 and Ravengale reconvened to revisit their back pages but soon found they had an album’s worth of material. Don’t Wake the Day is the result and it’s a potent smoking collection hewn from travel and life experience. Hints of 70s rock, blues, folk, reggae and soul drip through, while solid playing, taut arrangements and Ger’s impassioned vocals and astute lyricism top off a vitally welcome release.
The title track kicks with a forceful resolve while I Sell Roses shuffles with 60’s British Blues swagger, Ger’s harmonica wailing while James hints at gothic horror, and both Lonesome Road and I Will Succeed rock out convincingly. The delicate Sleeping In A Doorway adds pastoral beauty while I Feel Like Dancing struts along seductively and The Spider recalls The Doors in their Strange Days period.
Tom Jones’ excellent guitar and keyboards, allied to Brian Healy’s bass and drummer Eddie Clancy make a rock-solid rhythm section. On paper, Ravengale reminds me of a rough collision of Free and Skid Row with the lyricism of Donovan and Van Morrison, but the polished immediacy of their performances on Don’t Wake the Day remains their ace card.
John O’Regan

PAT McCARTHY
Call of The Wild
Own Label, 10 Tracks, 47 Minutes
Originally released in 2014, for some reason we missed it first time round, thankfully it’s still available from Pat.
The album opens with The River by the late Bill Staines. Pat’s voice giving it a gravitas in a vocal that is strong and eminently folky. That voice is used to lacerating effect in Dublin In My Tears, a kind of angry lament felt by a returned exile; Dublin isn’t what it was and hasn’t become what it could have been, where today’s youth don’t have the same ambition as he enjoyed in his own youth. He sings, “all they have now is doubts and fears”. Maybe that’s modern life. Maybe that’s an old fella’s take on it. But for Pat it’s the truth.
Seven Spanish Angels, we all know it well. Pat inhabits its story arc, a song with a definite ending to its narrative. If that song is Cowboy fiction, he turns to County Kerry for the real story of Dan Paddy Andy, the matchmaker who brought romance to lonely couples in the 1930s. Pat inhabits the ghost of Luke Kelly on The Night Visiting Song. His voice is a shoe-in for that Dublin style of street ballad and he does a fantastic job on this old standard. Likewise on the Call and The Answer, you may know it from Eleanor Shanley’s version, but this track is far more masculine. There is a deep drone underwriting Pat’s take on The Bantry Girls’ Lament (a Wexford song) that dates from the time of the Peninsula War.
He goes back to his native Kerry on Where The Sky Meets The Sea, a reminder of the place where the water and the mountains meet, where there is always a prospect of rain and songs to be crafted. He finishes with a rousing version of Hard Times Come Again No More. As fresh today as it was 178 years ago when Stephen Collins Foster first performed it. In that regard I suppose, waiting 11 years to bring this album to your attention might not be too much of a stretch, however, Pat’s songs never get old, and this is a keeper of a find.
Seán Laffey