Rua

Rua is the perfect follow-up to Sweet & Sour and puts Dún an Doras way up there, among the best Irish folk acts. The music presented here is tight, soulful, rich in arrangements, and marvelously interpreted. Singer Katerina Garcia masters every ornament of the genre (and there are many difficult ones). Her performance in "Home by Bearna" and "Sally" will ravish any fan of traditional music from the British Isles. Forget the fact that this band is Czech; Garcia has the accent firmly pinned down. The traditionals are beautifully rendered. Various reels and jigs penned by guitarist Petr Kosumbersky, flutist Radvan Markus, and fiddler Dan Malczyk pepper the set. They are often presented in suites, as in the case of "The Flaring Pot," one of the album's highlights. A folksier or even jazzier touch resurfaces here and there (in the suite "So Far So Good," in particular), adding a bit more diversity to the mix. The six-piece band welcomes guests on some tracks, including bodhrán player Kristina Volná for the suite "Psi Set" and banjo player Lubos Malina for "Home by Bearna" and "So Far So Good," but their contributions remain marginal at best. The all-acoustic nature of the album works out wonderfully well — why try to contemporize the sound when you have such talented musicians and such a bewitching lead singer? The album concludes with two songs sung in Irish (the other ones have English lyrics), the last of which is done a cappella. And there could not be a better finale. ~ François Couture, Rovi