Seánsongs

It’s difficult to know why the two CDs in this set have been packaged together. The second one, the liner notes inform us, was originally a separate album of mostly unaccompanied traditional songs and tunes, recorded in response to requests from fans. It was going to be called Elemental. That’s a perfectly good title – and the CD, I’d wager, would have gone down a treat with punters and critics alike.

Perhaps Keane knew that such a CD would sell... and perhaps he hoped that by pairing it with a collection of more contemporary material, he could win over additional listeners for the latter. After all, as he tells us in the booklet, he’s chosen these songs because he loves to sing them.

And there’s much to love on CD One. The opening track, Johnny Clegg’s ‘O Siyeza’, has a fine uplifting chorus with backing vocals from Galway-based refugees. Ron Kavana’s great ballad ‘Reconciliation’ has been recorded by many singers but seems tailor-made for Keane’s resonant, pleasantly nasal voice. Peter O’Hanlon’s ‘Song of the Camp’, with lyrics by Bayard Taylor, is one that could become equally pervasive with time.

Keane strains a bit to achieve an old-style country sound on ‘Barroom Girls’, by Gillian Welch (whose name is inexcusably misspelled on the CD jacket), and elsewhere there’s a lot of folksy, unremarkable material that fails to stick in the brain.

That’s not something that could for a moment be said about the second CD. This is beautiful, majestic, attention-grabbing stuff. When Keane sings the magnificent ‘Skibbereen’ (or ‘Skibereen’, as it’s written on the insert), it’s literally spine-chilling. Ditto for his sure-voiced a cappella renditions of ‘Dear Little Isle’ and ‘Banks of the Lee’. The Stephen Foster song ‘Beautiful Dreamer’ has delicate guitar and string accompaniment in an appropriately nostalgic flavour, and instrumental numbers provide variety.

As an album in itself, it would have been well capable of standing on its own two feet; shame it wasn’t given the chance to do so.