Here is an album conceived in Winkle's Bar, Kinvara, the juices got flowing over a weekend rave-up, with Liam O'Maonlai, Adam Clayton and Mike Scott just dropping around for a blast. That was two years ago, and now here it is: Paradise.

Sharon was in no mad rush to put out her first LP. Not long after the session she joined the Waterboys, and shelved the project while she went on tour. There were sessions in airplanes at festivals, in the backs of buses. She listened to more North American material she liked. The result is that 'Sharon Shannon' is only about 50% Irish trad, but you wouldn't necessarily know that. The album comes straight from a sitting room in heaven and should be blasted throughout the nuthouses of the world as a cure for clinical depression!

Everybody you know is on it, absolutely everybody. Consistent, however, is the influence of Steve Cooney, with whom Sharon hopes to tour, but the recording session attempted it seems, to catch the lively, natural flow of Winkle's, and there is none of this competitive statement or sense of the jet going for take-off you get on so many *contemporary* trad LPs.