Published on Nov 12, 1998
Celtic music is like anchovies. The people who love anchovies
are lyrical in their devotion, and the people who can’t stand the
little hairy fish go into utter hives at the very thought of having
to eat them. In the last five years, Celtic music — which includes
music from Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, Brittany, and Canada
— has made considerable inroads into the world music scene, mostly
by adulterating itself with another musical form: be it new age
lyricism like Clannad or pop harmonies like The Corrs, Celtic music
becomes more palatable to the average person by ‘cutting’ it a bit,
just as more people eat Caesar salad than gobble down straight
anchovies.
Some of the best attempts at restyling Celtic music for a modern
audience are coming out of eastern Canada and Newfoundland;
fiddlers like Angus Leahy of Leahy and Ashley MacIsaac are making
clever, accessible CDs with strong hooks to them. The latest entry
in this movement is the American debut by St John’s, Newfoundland
band Great Big Sea, entitled
Rant And Roar.
Great Big Sea has a history of being quirky. Their Canadian
releases include a fiddle-fueled cover of Slade’s “Run Runaway”,
which itself is a traditional tune, so we have the reverse alchemy
of trad-to-rock-to-rocktrad, strange enough for anyone. This CD
continues that quirkiness; a collection of songs from their second
and third Canadian releases,
Play and
Up, it features Great Big Sea in all their various moods.
They can be puckish (“Mari-Mac”, a traditional Scottish tune taken
to new heights by the sheer -speed- of its performance), rowdy
(“The Night Pat Murphy Died”), poppish (“End Of The World”, a
delightful fiddle-fueled cover of the R.E.M. song), or touching
(“Fast As I Can”, one of the sweetest ballads I’ve ever heard about
the beginning of a love affair).
Great Big Sea’s layered harmonies are what makes their sound; on
“The Old Black Rum”, they
sound like a room of drunken musicians having the time of
their lives, and the emotion is infectious. This isn’t a CD you sit
and analyze, or one that you write term papers about in Mass Media
class. This is music you party to, drink Bushmill’s or Molson to,
or, dare I say it,
dance to.
No, Celtic music isn’t for everyone. But if you were looking for
an introduction to the modern form, you could do worse — a lot
worse — than picking up this CD.