Exiles Return

The Waterford singer with crystalline tones, Karan Casey, and the Dublin guitar maestro John Doyle both made names for themselves with the Irish–American band Solas in the 1990s, and played a considerable part in the group’s success. Casey has since built up an impressive solo career while Doyle (whose resonant vocals were perhaps underused in Solas) stands at the pinnacle of accompanists (evinced by his work with fiddler Liz Carroll, amongst many others) and has two solo albums of his own. Considering how often their musical paths have crossed over the decade (and the relatively small size of the Irish traditional music world), there’s almost an inevitability about this album’s appearance, and that quasi–certainty is matched by some of the finest singing – both solo and duo – you’ll hear from an Irish release this year. Casey is at her most scintillating on ‘The Bay of Biscay’, a visitation song learnt from the singing of County Clare’s Nora Cleary. A demanding song, it’s as if Casey has exhumed its bones from Ireland’s musical graveyard and inhaled new life into it, accentuated by Doyle’s utterly apposite high–toned bouzouki accompaniment – though it could possibly be mandola – and droned background vocals. While Doyle’s compositional skills are to the fore on the title–track, perhaps his best vocal outing (involving some of his most intricate accompaniment) is ‘Madam I’m a Darlin’, a street song acquired from the late Frank Harte. Michael McGoldrick (flute and whistle) and Dirk Powell (banjo and double bass) provide apposite contributions, but, overall, this is a tale of two musical voices meeting in glorious harmony.