Daimh

The Rough Bounds

Goat Island Music

NAMED for the West Lochaber area where they played their first gig 20 years ago last month, The Rough Bounds finds Daimh in rude good health.

Currently a six-piece, with recent arrival, Lewis-born fiddler Alasdair White joining the three remaining original members, Angus Mackenzie (pipes), Gabe McVarish (fiddle) and Ross Martin (guitar), singer Ellen MacDonald and accordionist-mandola player Murdo Cameron, they present a sound here that’s instrumentally rich and sensitive to the needs of the Gaelic songs at the heart of their music.

A humorous key gives a visual guide to the songs’ content, with much heartbreak, some homesickness and the occasional punch-up, and MacDonald’s fine singing is supported on two tracks by illustrious backing vocalists including Kathleen MacInnes and Calum Alex MacMillan.

The group is confidently and thrillingly self-sufficient, however, as the pipes and fiddles intro to strathspey and reels set Mary’s Fancy illustrates with the sheer physicality and rhythmical strength of the musicianship. Elsewhere, there’s a train-like sound to the fiddles on the Donald MacLeod Reels that’s superseded by a locomotive-like momentum on whistles and pipes, and a contrastingly restrained quality to the majestic closing air, Chi mi’n Toman.