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| Reviews Arts Reviews Rough Deal String Band JJ Smyth's, Dublin BLUEGRASS is in the throes of an unlikely renaissance, its profile buoyed by the Coen brothers' recent Deep South farce Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? Expect its currency to further soar in the near future. Drained of ideas and weary of reinventing itself, contemporary music has continued to delve into the past. How long before some feckless studio boffin wakes up to bluegrass and revisits the genre? Until then, we should rejoice in sterling Dublin revisionists the Rough Deal Stringband: a three piece that has been hawking a canon of evocative bluegrass reinterpretations around Ireland's expanding R'n'B scene for several years. Regular headliners at JJ Smyth's weekly blues sessions, the ensemble interweaves sepia-hued traditional numbers and blistering self-penned compositions. At the centre of the mallee, Bill Whelan's frenetic banjo and Ben Keogh's serrated falsetto lend a timeless lustre to classics, including Happy Hollow, Icy Mountain and Sandy Boys. Tim Roger's piercing, high-strung fiddle adds a keening, melancholy sheen. Rough Deal's blend of the modern and the ancient highlights the links between Celtic and American folk music. As mainstream popular entertainment hurtles towards creative meltdown, we should treasure this trio's raw, livid passion. Edward Power 
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