FOURWINDS – Allta (own label FW005)

AlltaThe title Allta meaning wild” or “untamed” in Irish and reflecting the musical spirit, this is the traditional trio’s second album, (the first since co-founder Daoirí Farrell went solo in 2016) the core line up of lead singer Tom Delany (Uilleann pipes, whistles), Caroline Keane (concertina, whistles), and Robbie Walsh (bodhrán) expanded with contributions from Alan Murray on guitar and bouzouki and Laura and Barry Kerr on fiddle and flute, respectively.

A mix of instrumentals and songs, traditional, covers and original material, it opens with the lively concertina-led ‘The Road To Cúl Ros’, Keane’s tune paired with arrangements of the Uillean pipes’ driven ‘The Rainy Day’ and fiddling fun of ‘The Old High Reel’, learnt from Christy Moore’s The Iron Behind the Velvet. Penned by The Battlefield Band’s Brian McNeill after a particularly gruelling tour, the robustly sung ‘The Snows Of France And Holland’ captures the weariness of being on the road and the yearning for home and is twinned with the whistle-coloured ‘The Bridge Of Athlone’, a traditional tune learnt by Murray during his time with the Séamus Mór Ceilidh Band in Glasgow as a youth.

Sourced from flute virtuoso Conal Ó Gráda with bodhran providing the rhythm, ‘Greensleeves’, an old traditional jig not the Henry VIII signature tune, opens ‘Up And Away In The Morning’ which also encompasses ‘Paddy Fahey’s’, another jig, before closing with the vibrant title track, an arrangement by Matt Molloy and Seán Keane. It’s back to song with the swaying ‘Men Of The Sea’, pipes and bodhran anchoring John Conolly and Bill Meek’s reflective song for the seas and the travellers telling of a man looking back over his life on the trawl-fishing boats.

The longest track at just over five minutes, ‘Delia Keane’s’ is another instrumental cocktail arranged for bouzouki and concertina, the lead tune learned from Mick O’Brien and followed by the wheezing ‘Planxty Browne’, generally attributed to Turlough O’Carolan, and ending with ‘Allistrum’s March’, a jig that forms part of a piece commemorating the Battle of Knocknanuss in 1647.

Staying instrumental, the lead tune of ‘The Falcon’s Rest’ was written by Delany and Walsh named for the cob house where the band staying during a trip to Tasmania and its pipes and percussion weave a decided hypnotic antipodean folk feel, leading into the spritely ‘The Sheep In The Boat’, Junior Crehan’s adaptation of the traditional song ‘Anach Cuain’, and ending with a heady and hearty arrangement of ‘Peter Byrne’s Fancy’ inspired by Arty McGlynn.

Pipes dancing, ‘Mighty Keith’ kicks off with ‘Mighty Keith O’Neill’, Isaac Alderson’s Irish reel tribute to the celebrated late New York fiddle player, leading into Benedict Koehler’s no less lively ‘Stranger At The Gate’ and closing out with the traditional Co. Clare reel ‘Mary McMahori Of Ballinahinch’.

Whistling, as opposed to whistles, opens the bodhran-based ‘The Great Big Roaming Ass’, a much covered humorous traditional number inspired by the tales of Robbie McMahon from Co. Clare and recounting the misadventures of a man and his scruffy donkey (“Oh, to look at me would you ever think that I was in me prime?/Me clothes are torn and me shoes are worn and me age is forty nine/Oh, I had friends and pals galore but alas, those days are past/And the only one that I have left is a poor old, shook old ass”).

Keane contributes another feisty tune with ‘Mckinneys Of Chicago’, a commission from Maryann McTeague Keifer in honour of the owners of Chief O’Neill’s pub in Chicago in recognition of their contribution to traditional music. That, in turn, is followed by two craic-rousing traditionals, ‘The Rakes Of Clonmel’ and ‘The Walls Of Liscarroll’, the latter learned from Paddy Glackin and Robbie Hannan’s album ‘Whirlwind’.

The final song is the familiar and much recorded (most notably by Show Of Hands) ‘The Blue Cockade’, collected from English singer lan Worpole and telling of a young man’s regret at enlisting after experiencing the realities war as opposed to his romantic fantasies, the album ending with the high energy pipes and drums urgency of ‘The Slide o Lisdoonvarna’, a set of four slide tunes that builds a wall of sound as it marries ‘The Humours of Mountcollins’, ‘Sleamhnán Sheảin Dan Neil’, ‘The Road To Lisdoonvarna’ and ‘Finbarr Dwyer’s’.

Allta may only be their second album – and the debut of the new line-up, but they’re already proving a significant and fresh force in Irish traditional music.

Mike Davies

Artists’ website: www.fourwindsirishmusic.com

‘The Blue Cockade’ – official video:

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