Review: The Sailor’s Cravat – Sing Out! Magazine

Delighted to get this swell review of our recent recording THE SAILOR’S CRAVAT, from Sing Out! magazine, one of the most respected institutions in the traditional music world.

Off The Beaten Track / Sing Out! Magazine

Autumn 2011/Winter 2012 Issue
Volume 54, Number 4

THE SAILOR’S CRAVAT

Paddy O'Brien, button accordion

Tom Schaefer, fiddle

Paul Wehling, bouzouki

Erin Hart, vocals

Award-winning two-row button accordionist Paddy O’Brien, aside from being a much-admired virtuoso with a career spanning nearly four decades, is also a noted one-man repository of Irish traditional music, much of which was picked up from living masters during his travels. For the current outing, he has gathered tunes from a variety of sources, ranging from sprightly instrumental jigs, reels, polkas and hornpipes to unaccompanied sean-nos (ancient style) inflected vocal airs. He favors moderate tempos and lightly marked rhythms that allow the overly blithe melodies, most also graced by a melancholy tinge, to shine forth unimpeded. O’Brien is particularly well-partnered, with Tom Schaefer’s weightless yet unfailingly precise fiddle alternately doubling, following, or discreetly augmenting the themes in response to his lead, while Paul Wehling’s bouzouki provides them both with an ornate yet tastefully restrained launching pad. But Erin Hart’s singing is another soft revelation. Her dusky, ripely female voice nimbly negotiates dauntingly complex airs, like “The Flower of Magherally-O” and “Molly Bawn Or The Shooting of His Dear,” spinning out long-breathed ornamental phrases even as a formidable musical intelligence tells her when to leave well enough alone.

— Christina Roden