Paddy O’Brien, originally from County Offaly, is, by any standard you care to mention, one of the outstanding players of the two-row button accordion, with a string of awards to his name. He is also a prodigious collector of tunes, with an ability to retain regional variations and styles, as well as recalling the individual techniques of players who have now left us. He is quoted as saying that he likes musicians who play the nicest tunes even more than those who have technical musicianship – surely the sort of thing that can only be said by someone whose own technical musicianship is an absolute given.

Although he’s recorded a ton of music, including a pair of hefty collections totaling some 1,000 traditional tunes, this is technically only O’Brien’s second “solo” recording, hot on the heels of last year’s The Sailor’s Cravat. And it is, as you might expect, a sterling set of traditional music played by a master—pure and simple.