Seldom do you encounter recordings that are both as scholarly and lovingly honed as this. More seldom still do you trip across a debut as assured and considered as Fair Dawning.

Tim O’Shea is a singer and guitarist from Killarney. There’s a rawness to the arrangements on Fair Dawning that bespeaks of a love of the session and a refreshing unfamiliarity with mixing desks. Whether by accident or design, O’Shea’s music is laid down in its bare naked form, probably as true to its origins as it could possibly be in the confines of a studio.

The tunes here are eclectic, the songs rigorously trimmed to the bone. ‘Man Of The House/The Tap Room’ is a fine example of a well chosen pairing of the funereal and the loping, with plenty of air bubbles in both to allow fiddle and guitar to exchange lifelines with precision timing.