Derry folkie blossoms
Folk starlet Cara Dillon’s vocal abilities are well documented (a regular on the Derry Fleadh circuit, she won the All Ireland Singing Trophy at the age of 14), but she never favours excess ornamentation or feats of technique over the Euclidean theory which states the shortest distance between singer and listener is a direct line.
This is a trad arr. special: songs like ‘The Hill Of Thieves’ and ‘Johnny Johnny Johnny’ are deceptively straightforward in their rendition, but testify to a lifetime of craft. Any credible interpretive singer must have internally lived the lyric and metabolised the melody in order to deliver a song with any resonance (especially one as hallowed as ‘The Parting Glass’ or ‘She Moves Through The Fair’) and Dillon is a singer of uncommon integrity.
The timbre of her voice – stern and upright on ‘Spencer The Rover’, fragile but never fey on a lovelorn air like ‘False, False’ – make her as much a Morrisonian Ulster soul singer as a folk revivalist. She’s well served too: Sam Lakeman’s arrangements and production are careful but not overly conservative, and every player here serves the song with admirable gallantry. One imagines she’ll make more daring records (Kate Bush’s Hounds Of Love is her all-time favourite album) but Hill Of Thieves is proof that purity is not always that simple.

Key Tack: ‘False, False’