String Theory

Galway quartet We Banjo 3 here press home their ‘Celticgrass’ crossover credentials with their most confident and accomplished release to date. String Theory's thrust carries them from Ireland to the country and bluegrass terrains of the US and back again – with a diversion into Canada's Québécois landscape for ‘Aunt Jemima's Plaster – Sheepkins and Beeswax’. Tellingly, it segues into Tipperary luminary Paddy O’Brien's ‘Ormond Sound’ and, in a nod to the Irish group Four Men and a Dog, ‘Marco's Reel’. The result is somewhat dizzying in its eclecticism, ravishing in its amalgam of influences. Kentucky bluegrass legend Bill Monroe's ‘Wheel Hoss’ and North Carolina fiddler Marcus Martin's old-time-accented ‘Cousin Sally Brown’ gleefully rub shoulders with traditional Irish reels and new instrumentals and songs by David Howley and Enda Scahill.

There's a thoroughly contemporary edge, too, in Greg Brown's ‘Ain’t Nobody Else Like You’ (which is a charming duet between Howley and guest vocalist Aoife Scott), the infectious cover of Noelie McDonnell's ‘Happiness’ and the traditional ballad ‘Two Sisters’, a tale of murderous sibling jealousy given a twist of Tom Waits by the band. A sense of the quartet's noticeably tighter ensemble playing is evident throughout in a vivacious enjoyable set.