Buttons & Bows
Album: The Return Of Spring
Label: Self Released
Tracks: 14
Website: http://www.buttonsandbowsmusic.ie

The palette of Irish music is capacious enough to encompass varietal strands of the tradition within its confines, and it is truly a cause for celebration when an album such as this comes along, for it combines all of the things that make the music so special-great playing, musicianship of the first water, and 14 sets of tunes which would melt the coldest of hearts, and raise the spirit on the most inclement day. The opening track-composed by Seamus McGuire-is a beautiful musette style tune called Oyster Island where fiddles, accordion and muted strings create a rich, stately soundscape which suggests that translation to a wider stage is not beyond the bounds.

Each member of the band has a compositional input into proceedings, and Gary O'Briain and box player Jackie Daly join forces impishly to construct The Buttons and Bows Jig, which they follow with The Blue Summer Sky-not seen much of that here lately!-and it's the contrast between these pieces, and others, that give the band such a wide appeal. No other combo could carry off the task with such satisfying results, where polkas from The Rushy Mountain, as much a state of mind as a geographic location, combine with as beautiful an air as Fort Dunree, composed some years ago by Manus McGuire. A stately pace fuses with a strong, lush melody to transport one back in time.

There are strong historical references throughout, if not in the titles of the tunes, then to their provenance, from original compositions celebrating birth to reels first played by the fiddlers and flute players of the Irish diaspora, and it is these strong nods to the bedrock which gives the album such a strength. This is music which comes from within, which is of the spirit, full of who and what we are, a chart of an emotional landscape, alternately craggy and sweepingly majestic, but most of all, a joyous and compelling experience from start to finish. Truly, truly stunning.

Oliver P. Sweeney