The Haar

Fiddler Adam Summerhayes and percussionist Cormac Byrne are a prolific pair. In #148, I wrote about their new outfit Dodo Street Band – a quintet riffing on the meeting point between Celtic, Gypsy and klezmer sounds. In the next issue, I was reviewing Stone Soup, a debut from the pair as a duo that was striking for the fact that it was recorded in a single take with no preparation.

And now comes The Haar, a new project that takes them much deeper into the wilds of Ireland, and loses the Gypsy and klezmer elements. This collaboration came out of a bodhrán festival session in Connemara, when the pair heard the singing of Irish singer, Molly Donnery. Accordionist Murray Grainger (of Dodo Street Band) completes the line-up.

Once again, a key feature is recording in one take, just letting the music flow. This time it’s a sweeping panorama of Irish traditional music and song, with the melancholy of emigration, press gangs and drudging poverty as ever-present themes. The ‘haar’ in question is the sea mist that rolls in across Connemara, and this is a wraith-like, vaporous debut of haunting traditional songs from musicians with the Irish canon running in their veins.