Sharon Shannon’s restless muse refuses to let her sit still. Having led her into past collaborations with such towering figures as Shane MacGowan and Steve Earle, her latest cohorts are the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, within whose warm embrace her dextrous accordion playing is applied to ten new tunes.
The opener ‘Top Dog Gaffo’, about a real dog, playfully sets the tone for an album that exudes a sense of serious fun. Jim Murray’s deft guitar opens his own composition ‘April Magnolia’, before Shannon unfolds it in her trademark melodious style. The ever-reliable James Delaney on piano does likewise for the plaintive ‘Cape Clear’ which also features some gentle fingering from the divine Ms. S. There’s a delicious lightness to her skittery playing on the three-piece suite ‘Windchime Dance’, and on ‘Dreamcatcher’. She creates an appealing wistfulness too on the sumptuous ‘Butterflies’, while ‘Wood Road’ has a soft-rock delicacy that helps lift the mood.
Shannon sounds perfectly at ease throughout, and there’s no sense of competition between her and the orchestra. All tracks were composed by her and Murray, a welcome departure from the days when trad albums trod too many over-worn paths. A vocal or two might have brought some added colour, but this is an album she has wanted to make for some time: it’s been well worth the wait.