REVIEW FROM www.livingtradition.co.uk

JOHN MCSHERRY - Soma
Compass Records 5382

It’s a certainty that you need a hook to catch the listener’s attention at the start of a musical performance; on this album John McSherry has the finest hook ever with his own composition An Bhean Chaointe (The Keening Woman).  I started the CD player but didn’t even get to sit down. The pure sadness of this tune had me transfixed for its duration. There’s a desperate loneliness, a terrible yearning and sense of loss that McSherry has captured perfectly.  I can well see the tune becoming a standard for many occasions. My only regret was that the track isn’t three times as long for I felt I could listen to it forever.  (I know, I know; I could have put it on ‘repeat’ but that wouldn’t have been the same.) ‘Keening women’ were noted for their skill in lamenting the dead and so were invited to wakes to mourn the departed. The phrase can also mean any woman in mourning for a loved one. McSherry’s title for his tune has the first meaning but it would also fit the second.

As you’d expect, there’s a majority of dance music on this album. I can’t single out any of the seven dance tune tracks as favourites; they’re all equally good. McSherry’s piping is tight and controlled with really tasteful ornamentation. I get the impression that he’s holding himself back on some of the dance tunes. These are real heel-and-toe tapping stuff, what the late Joe Cooley used to call ‘tamping the feet’. The Rambles of Kitty set is a great example of this; it’s the kind of playing that makes you want to dance. As one old friend would say, ‘Jaysus, that’s savage music!’

I must praise McSherry’s slow airs, his feeling for the tune is perfect, obviously so on his own compositions.  We got the reel from the Scots, the jig from the French and the hornpipe from the English but the slow air is a uniquely Irish musical form. There’s nothing quite like it in the world.  An old friend used to explain slow airs as ‘rhythm without a beat’. You can’t tap your feet to them, nor should you want to. Listening to McSherry’s playing, I thought at first there’s a pulse in there, but the pulse is a beat. I later realised that what he does is more like breathing. We don’t breathe at the same rate all of the time and McSherry varies the tempo slightly in his slow air playing.  It’s very subtle but very effective; it really gets inside the air and brings out all that’s good in it. I particularly like his rendition of the old air, An tAisling Gheal  (The Bright Vision); this has the real lonesome sound to it that the best of players can bring out.

As well as being a fine piper, McSherry is a prolific composer; twelve of the tunes are his own, including both of those on the Maid of Murlough set. McSherry plays uilleann pipes, low and high whistle, accompanied by various friends and relations on other instruments. All in all, this is a great collection from one of the finest young pipers in the world.

Mick Furey