This attempt to marry Riverdance, The Celtic Tenors and the Woman’s Heart concept is by all accounts taking the US by storm with half a million albums sold to date and the top slot in the Billboard World Music Chart for seven months. Now it’s our turn.
It’s a simple, but well-executed recipe. Take some comely and tuneful maidens to do the singing, add a bunch of sanitised Irish tunes (‘Danny Boy’, ‘Isle Of Innisfree’), draft in a few songs from the modern era (Enya’s ‘Orinoco Flow’, ‘Walking In The Air’, Clannad’s ‘Harry’s Game’, and yet another version of ‘You Raise Me Up’), then bring it all to the boil with a thick covering of a suitably syrupy production.
As you might imagine, the quality varies over the 18 tracks, and while the Clannad-like harmonies on ‘Siuil A Run’ are truly sublime, you pay for that pleasure with a version of ‘Orinoco Flow’ that is truly awful. The instrumental work is arguably far more stimulating than the workwomanlike versions of known songs, and Mairead Nesbitt’s violin playing, especially on the delicate ‘The Ashoken Farewell’ and ‘The Butterfly’, and Orla Fallon on harp bring most to the party.
So if you’re in search of pioneering originality, genuine passion or conviction, this is not the place to look. But if you need to spend an undemanding hour in the company of a bunch of truly professional musicians celebrating a particular brand of Irishness, you could do worse. It will make a lot of people very happy this Chritsmas.