La an Dreoilin

This quintet of serious young men came together in 2001, by which time its then 23-year-old founder, fiddler Oisín Mac Diarmada, had already made a trio album for the Clo Iar-Chonnachta label soberly entitled ‘Traditional Irish Music on Fiddle, Banjo and Harp’. Like both that recording and Téada’s eponymous debut, the group’s second album Lá An Dreoilin (released in the US under the title Give Us A Penny And We Will Be Gone) roots itself solidly in the tradition. The material is a mixture of songs in Irish and pristinely rendered tunes, with fiddle, flute, banjo and box all in perfect balance – plus tasteful accompaniment on guitar, bouzouki and bodhrán. Particularly nifty is their treatment of ‘The Ace And Deuce Of Piping’, ushered in by a clatter of echoing foot thumps that are meant to evoke the arrival of the Wren Boys on St. Stephen's Day.