Clare Sands

Galway-born multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Clare Sands has been making a name for herself on the Irish and international live circuit as a performer whose eclectically sourced material is as likely to excavate into Ireland's ancient myths and landscapes as it is to explore the political exigencies of its here and now. Her eponymously-titled sophomore album is characteristically intelligent and concept-led; new songs alternating with atmospherically accompanied spoken-word.

Striking connections are made and involving threads spun out, nowhere more so than the segueing of ‘Focail Feasa’, featuring the stirringly topical civil rights veteran Bernadette Devlin McAliskey, into the anthem-in-waiting ‘Awe na Mná (Praise the Women)’, infectiously laced with hints of Dervish delirium. Cousin Tommy Sands recites his own ode to spring, ‘Abair Liom do Rúin’, Sands herself providing husky, turf-scented vocals hymning time-worn customs. As does the cello and fiddle-accompanied ‘I See No Light But Yours’, tributing immemorial Connemara life and, glancingly, legendary sean nós singer Seosamh Ó hÉanaí (Joe Heaney). Some may find the spoken extracts esoteric, but this is a bold, often beautiful follow-up to last year's recommendable Join Me at the Table and brimming with ideas. If Sands and Brian Casey's production occasionally errs on the side of more rather than less, it doesn't dilute the hope for more to come.