The Great Irish Songbook

Dervish mark 30 years together with their first studio album in more than a decade and the first to be released on American roots label Rounder Records, home to luminaries such as Alison Krauss, Gregg Allman and Steve Martin.

Not surprisingly, the accent here – on a baker's dozen of songs culled from the Irish songbook – is decidedly transatlantic, Dervish staying discreetly in the background to support an eclectic array of vocalists, some more persuasive than others. The joker in the pack is actor Brendan Gleeson's ‘The Rocky Road to Dublin’, which manages to be simultaneously spirited and underplayed. There's curiosity value, too, in David Gray's characteristically morose take on Andy Irvine's classic ‘The West Coast of Clare’, Kate Rusby's gorgeously melancholic ‘Down by the Sally Gardens’ and the bluegrass bite and brio of The SteelDrivers' ‘There's Whiskey in the Jar’.

Dervish's own Cathy Jordan takes the lead on two tracks with Steve Earle, Imelda May, Vince Gill, Andrea Corr and Abigail Washburn providing piquancy or poetry to a veritable ‘greatest hits’ collection of traditional Irish favourites. The musical accompaniment is low-key, Sinéad O'Connor collaborator Graham Henderson's production stressing the mellow and mellifluous. All it needs is a glass of the black stuff and a turf fire.