Customer Reviews

Heathery Breeze

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Of Molloy's many recordings, this remains my favorite. With his usual virtuosity, he performs a selection of traditional tunes ranging from the lively to the gently melancholy. This album has a more consistent "feel" than most of his others: there isn't an intense heartbreaker (like "The Parting of Friends" or "O Rathaille's Grave"), and even the jollier tunes are restrained. But it's never dull: the variety comes from the different timbres of his wooden flutes, and from the characteristic tones and harmonies of the accompaniment. He's well supported here by his former Bothy Band colleagues Michael O Domhnaill (guitar) and Donal Lunny (bouzouki, synthesizer, et al.). Molloy's phrasing is nothing short of marvelous: the interaction between the instrument, the player, and the tune is nowhere any clearer than on a simple flute controlled by the life-energy of the breath. Elsewhere he's compared playing the flute to walking a tightrope -- but on this album he doesn't merely walk, he dances.

On this album you hear Matt Molloy play a resonant, sonorouslow Bb flute and a brilliant, hornlike high Eb flute in addition to his regular D, giving a wonderful variety of timbres and textures to his playing. In particular, his track of Drowsy Maggie on the Bb just lays back and cooks, and his "Jenny's Chickens" on the Eb is played with a brilliant brutality that any lover of the stronger, harsher sounds of the wooden flute will immediately want more of.