Chasing Moonlight

Composer, musician extraordinaire, and – lest we forget – the man who, with his brother Eddie, first paired the combination of pipes and guitar in Irish music, Finbar Furey is currently enjoying a new lease of life on foot of his role in Gangs Of New York. The subtitle of this album – Love Songs From Ireland – certainly conveys the impression that it is aimed at communities beyond these shores,including those whose experience of the genre is a twenty-second soundbite from Riverdance on American TV.

Reinventing the wheel is a process fraught with danger, but in this setting it works very well, because Finbar does bring something new to songs like Nora, one of O’Casey’s loveliest pieces. Why and how so? Well, he’s joined by musicians who don’t normally work in the tradition, thus they come to the project with no baggage, but in addition he has done us all a great service by reclaiming ‘The Fields Of Athenry’ from the football terraces in Scotland! It’s now what it should be – a fine retelling of a sad episode from our past.

There is new material also, including ‘Connemara’, a song which takes its momentum from the lyric rather than the melody. Overall, this is an album which, despite its obvious and finely honed commercial edge, does suggest that sometimes, a new skin for an old ceremony really can work. It does here.