★★★★★
The live context often tends to exaggerate a musician's natural inclinations -- punk bands play louder and faster, reggae bands crank up the bass an extra notch or two, Irish musicians thrown in wilder ornaments and wind the tempo up a bit. For fiddler Martin Hayes, whose natural tendency is to play in a stately, decorous style that shows off the tune to maximum advantage and minimizes "look at me...
- music.aol.com
2008-08-28
★★★★★
Martin Hayes is a fiddler from County Clare whose sure but gentle touch and deep musical intelligence have combined to produce one of the most satisfying recordings of traditional music in a long time. Accompanied in most cases by only an understated guitar, and in duet on one lovely track with his father, Hayes performs a long set of tunes that range from the familiar ("Rakish Paddy," "The Cliffs of Moher") to the more obscure ("Kilnamona Barndance," "Farewell to Milltown")...
- music.aol.com
2008-08-28
★★★★★
Martin Hayes was just coming to international prominence when this, his first solo album, was released. He plays fiddle in a style modeled on the playing of the older fiddlers in his home county of Clare in the west of Ireland; it 's a gentle, understated approach, never very fast, with lots of slides and a subtle but very expressive use of dynamics...
- music.aol.com
2008-08-28
★★★★★
Over the course of his career, Hayes he been slowly stripping everything extraneous from his music. In the long, long break since his last CD, he's obviously made a lot of progress on the road, as the opening cute, "The Clare Reel," demonstrates. There's no fat here; everything serves to highlight the simple beauty of the melody, exposing and buffing it to a silky brilliance...
- music.aol.com
2008-08-28