Solas an Lae

Fiddler Ultan O'Brien and singer Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin have been one of Ireland's best-kept secrets in recent years. Having first worked together in folk group Skipper's Alley nearly a decade ago,their debut duo outing on disc, Solas an Lae (The Light of the Day), is an accomplished meeting of minds and musical equals. Ó Ceannabháin's sonorous sean-nós tenor sounds freshly dug from the soil of his native Connemara, O'Brien's fiddle strongly accented by his County Clare origins. 

Both demonstrate becoming fidelity to traditional norms, but there's a telling contemporary edge that cuts through to securely root Solas an Lae in both the past and the present. Notably so in the nine-minute 'All Our Lonely Ghosts', a searing critique of institutional failings towards women and children and a lament, underpinned by a forlorn drone, for infants interred in an anonymous mass grave in Tuam. The timeless tale of a bride-to-be mourning her beloved's departure for war, 'Tá Na Páipéir Dhá Saighneáil', has a dark theatricality vividly inked in by sombre vocals and keening fiddle. More bracing are the feisty instrumental 'Spikey Flynn' and 'Máirseáil Na Sióg' with Ó Ceannabháin's dancing wordless vocals perfectly complemented by O'Brien's pertly poised fiddling. Wonderfully evocative and recommended.