Beach Daze

The Island Girls are accordionist Karen Tweed and piano and fiddle player Margaret Robertson, MBE. The Islands are Orkney, where Tweed now lives, and Robertson’s native Shetland. Robertson’s playing is jaunty but direct, no nonsense; Tweed’s is lusher and more expansive. In this, Beach Daze reflects characteristics of both archipelagos.

The 12 sets of tunes, all composed by Robertson and Tweed, are prompted by occasions, people and places. There’s even a polka inspired by a cat. This is, then, an intensely personal album. ‘Dancing in Dairsie’ and two tunes in the ‘St Alban’s Columcilles’ set were written to celebrate weddings. They brim with joy. As does Tweed’s ‘Lighthouse Lovers’, composed for a couple getting married in a lighthouse. This, somehow, captures the elevation of the tower. Beach Daze is not all celebration: Robertson wrote ‘Air for Gordon’, for someone leaving the islands. Her yearning fiddle playing evokes the sadness of this, as it does in ‘Mother’s Love’, redolent of loss as well as love. This music, rooted in the traditional, is not stuck in it. There is a fresh jazziness to ‘Pam’ and ‘Daylight’. It is an effervescent, joyful album from which tunes will find their way into the parlours of Shetland, the kitchens of Orkney and sessions all over the place.