Cara Dillon – A Thousand Hearts (Charcoal Records)

Irish folkie Cara Dillon prefers to interpret the many traditional songs she loves with a much clearer and crisper end result, than say Neil Young’s rather perverse ‘A Letter Home’ album, which was recorded in a 1947 recording booth…. The excellent ‘A Thousand Hearts’ is her first album for five years, and follows an intensive and elongated period of child rearing with her parental and musical partner Sam Lakeman, brother of Sean. As usual, stories involving lassies and sailors, staple fare of traditional folk music, are ubiquitous, but wrapped in varying musical shades and tones; from merry jigs to peaceful balladry and sad laments. But there’s more to it than ancient folklore; for instance there’s her version of the very rarely heard ‘Run, River’, a song originally performed by the practically unknown 90s outfit Suddenly, Tammy! Plus Shawn Colvin’s Shotgun Down The Avalanche gets a makeover. Otherwise, it’s a choice selection of old family favourites, obscure traditional,and Gaelic songs that inhabit this folk based album, but performed and recorded with a markedly contemporary hue.

Beautifully sung as always, the album features a plethora of superb musicians, and not only from the strictly folk tradition. Acoustic indie-folker John Smith is here, as are the Winter Mountain boys, Joseph and Martin, rising American singer songwriter Aoife O’Donovan, and, rather surprisingly, Eagles bassist Timothy B. Schmidt lends his tonsils!

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