Fire Draw Near

Fire Draw Near is a bewitching baker's dozen of often rough and raw but altogether relishable recordings. Compiled by Lankum's Ian Lynch, the selection suggests Rough Trade's River Lea imprint is on a roll, following John Francis Flynn's I Would Not Live Always.

Stretching from 1947 to 2013 and recorded in bars, living rooms, campsites and studios, each track, drawn from Lynch's similarly titled (and recommendable) monthly podcast, rings out with a deep-rooted authenticity marvellous to behold. Connemara Traveller family The Raineys get things off to a flying start with the raucous fiddle-driven ‘Woman of the House’, Dubliner Tommy Reck's ‘The Kilfrush / The Trip to Durrow’ is an almost casually thrown-off display of virtuoso piping, and Clare woman Nora Cleary dispatches ‘The Codfish’ with a becomingly cheeky directness of spirit. Connemara exile Joe Heaney's ‘Amhrán na hEascainne’ is sean nós singing at its purest, while there are fine examples of English-lyric tradition from Dubliners’ Frank Harte (‘The Finding of Moses’) and Luke Cheevers (‘Ulysses’), Tom Lenihan's delightfully antique and rustic ‘Paddy's Panacea’, and Joe Holmes’ lilting, County Antrim-accented ‘The Dark Eyed Gypsy’. It's to be hoped that Lynch's podcast, now in its third year, has plenty more treasures to reveal in future volumes.