The fine print on the sixth album by US-based trad supergroup Solas credits fiddler Winifred Horan for “catering and cooking (love those crab cakes)”, which no doubt helps to explain the relaxed, comfortable feel of the songs and tunes here. While it’s nice to hear the band getting back to an organic mostly acoustic sound, there was a sharper edge to their previous output, a greater willingness to take musical risks.
Still, there are plenty of great songs and tunes here. Horan’s jazzy waltz-tempo composition ‘The Highlands Of Holland’ is particularly nifty, although the title is questionable: that joke about mountains in Holland has been done before, and the tune itself sounds more like something you’d expect to hear played by a Russian gypsy fiddler in a smoky Paris café.
There are also fine original tunes by Egan, accordionist Mick McAuley, and the band’s newest recruit – singer, songwriter, guitarist and keyboard player Eamon McElholm, formerly of Stockton’s Wing, who joined in August 2002. McElholm does some lovely backing vocals on the album, and it’s a pity his talents weren’t put to greater use: Deirdre Scanlon sings no less than seven numbers, including McElholm’s ‘Just You’. It’s no slight on her vocal abilities (which are considerable) to say that at least one of these might have been jettisoned in order to give McElholm a chance to take the lead.
As for Scanlon, her restrained treatment of Dan Fogelberg’s ‘Scarecrow’s Dream’ deserves special mention, and so do two uptempo songs as Gaeilge – ‘Máire Mhilis Bhrea’ and ‘Seoladh na nGamhna’.
Guest musicians include Chico Huff on bass, Ben Wittman on drums and percussion, and banjo wizard Béla Fleck, but their contributions are unobtrusive; this is very much a band album. No doubt things will liven up a bit when the members of Solas get out on stage with this material ... just so long as they lay off on those crab cakes beforehand.