The premise is a simple but quietly radical one – get a cross section of the Irish music industry to record/re-record tracks in their native tongue, thereby focusing the attention of the very group of people who hold the future of the language in their hands. It could have been awful, of course, a crass attempt to get down with the kids and make learning cool. Yet Ceol ‘06 manages to work on a number of levels.
First, and maybe most importantly, it’s a musical success. The project has attracted enough well-known names to ensure that it’s a good listen from the opening bars of Mundy’s ‘Meicsiceo’ onwards. With The Revs, The Pale, (honorary Irishmen) The Waterboys, John Spillane, Roesy, The Sawdoctors and others lending their support, this double album serves as a very useful snapshot of the domestic scene.
Fortunately it adds up to a lot more than that. What is surprising is just how natural most of the well-known songs sound in this format (and you’ll be pleased to hear that The Frames are just as toe-curlingly earnest in Irish as they are in English).
The Corrs add not only some mainstream muscle but also prove that their return to their roots is creatively productive; The Frank And Walters offer a radical re-working of ‘Fashion Crisis Hits New York’ and both Carol Keogh (here with Autamata) and Lisa Hannigan are in spine-tingling form.
Kila, meanwhile, have been doing this sort of thing for years and their new version of ‘Tog E Go Bog E’ proves not only that they shouldn’t ever have been thrust into some nu-trad ghetto (ironically probably due to their very loyalty to the language celebrated here), but also that Ronan O Snodaigh is one of the nation’s finest voices in any genre.
If Ceol ‘06 has one problem, it’s that it could have done with a touch more variety. At 26 tracks, there is a tendency to fall back onto the well-travelled folky singer-songwriter route where it would have been nice to hear some rock, punk, hip-hop or even pop (Westlife singing in Irish – now there’s a thought). Such quibbles are for another time, though. Right now, let’s applaud the superb execution of a great idea and sit back and see if it can make a real difference.