Doolin’

Doolin’ enter their second decade this year, pushing for a wider audience with their first release on Compass Records. Formed in Toulouse in 2005, the six-piece outfit lay claim to be being ‘France's premier Celtic band,’ and their eponymous fifth album is an altogether eclectic proposition. It's a smorgasbord of influences from bluegrass to French chanson (via a yearning cover of Jacques Brel's ‘Amsterdam’) to Parisian hip-hop. Their cover of Sinéad O’Connor's ‘Famine’ blends rap, lightning fiddle playing and percussive guitar from guest John Doyle. Covers of Steve Earle's ‘The Galway Girl’ (enlivened by Alison Brown's virtuoso banjo) and Bob Dylan's ‘The Ballad of Hollis Brown’ (featuring Kenny Malone's percussion) both take advantage of the album's Tennessee recording to add tangy, tart colours to their authentically Irish sound. Elsewhere, traditional reels ‘The Road to Gleanntán’ and ‘Reel Africa’ are despatched with verve and feeling, while ‘Mary's Jigs’ is richly realised by fiddler Guilhem Cavaillé and Fournel siblings Jacob (flute) and Josselin (bodhrán). The polka-like ‘Sailing Across the Ocean’ is a fresh, forward-moving song with no traces of a French accent in Wilfried Besse's vocals. Well worth investigating.