Releases > Releases June 2019
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RUNA
Ten: The Errant Night
RUNACD006, 2019, 15 Tracks 68 Minutes
www.runamusic.com
RUNA’s ten year celebration is heralded in with a punning title, named after one of the most famous Child Ballads. The song is a crowd favourite, but it hasn’t made its way to this album. That’s not a bad thing, they might be a decade down but this is no staid retrospective.
They open proceedings with a fresh take on an old Scottish whaling ballad, Again For Greenland with new recruit Caleb Edwards’ tumbling mandolin bringing in the clear vocals of Shannon Lambert-Ryan. It’s in the same vein as many a Capercaillie classic, that’s how good RUNA are. If you judge a band by the company they keep, then RUNA have some illustrious guests including Cormac DeBarra and Eileen Ivers. This is quality.
A harmonica giving a bluesy intro to Tim O’Brien’s John Riley makes for a lively version. Based on the infamous San Patricios affair, that plaintive harmonica cutting above Cheryl Prashker’s bongo beat. The middle section is a jazzy walk down, before the vocals bite again. I was delighted to hear RUNA’s version of the Banks of Newfoundland. I’d recorded it myself about 21 years ago, and this version is a far sassier take on this old sea-song. Talking of Atlantic crossings, Shannon does a sensitive cover of Andy Irvine’s The Green Fields of Canada, backed by guitar from Fionán DeBarra, as it underpins the emotional vocals. There are tune sets too, including Kelly Man Reels a triple dose of dance tunes (the first two composed by Fionán). They don’t forget past band members who come back for the Alumni Set, an infectious concoction of JS Bach meets Irish trad. Listen to their skill as the classical number segues into Paddy O’Brien’s Ormond Sound.
The band have a fondness for the work of Canadian singer songwriter David Francey and they cover two of his wonderful songs; Saints and Sinners and Torn Screen Door, taking his work to an international audience. They close the CD with a Tibetan song called Bright Morning Stars; a lonely fiddle accompanying Shannon, then the band comes in with a wash of chords and a close harmony ending. Magical.
Seán Laffey
DERVISH
The Great Irish Songbook
Rounder Records, 13 Tracks, 63 Minutes
www.dervish.ie
It’s always a difficult one to write about an album of established traditional songs. Why? Your level of description relies on the depth of your emotional connection to the singer’s expression, tone and timbre and your connection to the lyrical content or context of the song itself. So, when you are lucky enough to be presented with a chance to listen in depth to Dervish’s latest offering; The Great Irish Songbook, it’s with a slight hesitancy as the songs are those that anyone with even a slight interest in the traditional will have already made connections with on many levels. The hesitancy is short lived though as the textured layers to songs that are stalwarts of the tradition connect instantly on a multitude of levels through musicality, understanding and emotion.
The textured layers include the emphasis on the eclectic, yet totally revered, artists that have joined Dervish on this album. David Gray adds a raw, yet vivid, variant to the Andy Irvine classic, The West Coast of Clare, Imelda May re-ignites and refines Molly Malone, Rhiannon Giddens breathes life into The May Morning Dew and an exquisite version of She Moves Through the Fair is rendered from the honeyed tone of Andrea Corr. Steve Earle shifts from the girl to the garment as he puts his inimitable touch to The Galway Shawl, Brendan Gleeson rocks The Rocky Road and Kate Rusby is stunning with vocal individuality with her version of Down By the Sally Gardens; yet despite this esteemed echelon of guests, the magic touch is from Dervish themselves. The instrumental arrangements enhance both the lyrical imagery and the vocal expression with a creative impact that resonates from deep within. The Dervish mark is evident on each track with Cathy’s distinctive tone lifting and driving in a harmonic treatment to match and lift each voice and her vocal on Dónal Óg is simply stunning.
Almost thirty years on and, with refreshing verve, the Dervish dynamite explodes again.
Eileen McCabe
THE GLOAMING
The Gloaming 3
Real World, 10 Tracks, 70 Minutes
www.realworldrecords.com
Slow burning dance tunes and deeply melancholic songs sum up the third album from The Gloaming. Both the songs and melodies are given space to ebb flow, grow and decline, and that after all is the trademark of a Gloaming album. So what’s different on this third iteration? Simple answer, songs. The songs mark the big change, bravely they open with Iarla O’Lionard singing Meáchan Rudaí (The Weight of Things), a poem by Liam Ó Muirthile set to music; there’s a repetition of the word, Meáchan. Iarla recording the words before the accompaniment was written, Thomas Bartlett’s arrangements are in response to the emotion of the song, not the words themselves as Thomas is not an Irish speaker.
The Gloaming is Martin Hayes (violin, fiddle), Thomas Bartlett aka Doveman (piano), Iarla Ó Lionaird (vocals), Dennis Cahill (guitar) and Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh (hardanger fiddle). There are longer melodies where Martin Hayes’ fiddle and Caoimhín’s Hardanger weave through the pieces. There is an archival antique feel to The Old Road to Gary. The seven minutes of Sheehan’s Jigs fly by with Bartlett’s piano and Cahill’s guitar adding moving accompaniment lines, characterised by short runs to plangent chords, the whole piece building to its wild crescendo. Fiddling is to the fore in the somewhat understated The Lobster, a slow almost hesitant beginning that builds on tone, shape and confidence.
Always hard to describe, the Gloaming are making music that is strangely familiar, yet still strange. On this third album, you can take two roads, follow the bright path of melodies or dander along the Conair na marbh with those songs. Gabriel Rosenstock’s translation of Meáchan Rudaí is a poignant appraisal of this album: “The weight of ancestry. The weight of neighbours. The weight of tribal lore. The weight of the great world.” As if to underscore that sentiment the album closes with the most traditional sounding song Amhran na nGleann; its ancient air transcending to unaccompanied ending, a reverberation of Iarla’s Ballyvourney roots.
Seán Laffey
FLOOK
Ancora
Flatfish Records 006 CD, 12 Tracks, 49 Minutes
www.flook.co.uk
It seems like a long time since Flook’s last album, and indeed it is - 15 years give or take a few months. The band never really went away - in under a decade they had established such a reputation that they were in demand for bigger and bigger gigs, more and more new projects, so Flook became less of a focus and more of a fulcrum for these four pre-eminent musicians. Allen, Finnegan, Kelly and Boyd have been pulled together again so often by popular demand that they finally decided to “get the band back together”, and they’ve had a few hugely successful tours in the last couple of years, so an album was an obvious next step. Ancora is it, and I have to say it was worth the wait. Largely featuring the compositions of Brian Finnegan and Sarah Allen, this recording picks up where Haven left off, but with the benefit of so much more experience. Flook are back with a bang, and better than ever.
At the core of this music is the Irish tradition, always acknowledged and never abused, as well as Scottish, Breton, English and other influences. Reel for Rubik is straight out of the contemporary trad top drawer: think Talisk and Ìmar, McGoldrick and Hot Griselda, At First Light and Moxie. The next three tracks are gentler, winding down with resonant alto flute to the slow Companion Star, and back up through the Caribbean groove of The Coral Castle, to the percussive medley of Turquoise Girl. John Joe Kelly and Ed Boyd kick bottom lines with gusto on pieces by Simon Chrisman, Jarlath Henderson, and Zoë Conway (who along with John McSherry contributes two tunes here). Flook are helped out by twelve guests, sparingly employed, adding the usual bass and string parts, but also some more exotic touches such as Eva Tejedor’s tambourine on the Spanish-sounding Bunting Fund and Mark Tucker’s theramin for the final flourish on McSherry’s The Quickenbeam. Much of this album sees Flook in relaxed mood - the soothing Lalabee and bittersweet Ellie Goes West, but this only makes the contrasting upbeat tracks more enjoyable.
Ancora marks a very welcome return from one of folk’s finest bands. Don’t leave it so long next time, lads!
Alex Monaghan
THE BYRNE BROTHERS
The Byrne Brothers
Own Label, 9 Tracks, 29 Minutes
Available from their online store www.thebyrnebrothers.com
The first stateside CD from The Byrne Brothers is now released. The family are a band from Dublin who moved to Donegal for a few years and now live in Orlando Florida. Their second CD The Byrne Brothers, consists of 9 tracks and each one livelier than the previous. The collection features the boys and their dad Tommy playing their huge collection of instruments.
The new album is dedicated to the boys’ Granny, Maureen Byrne, who died last year. The album opens with the Kerry slide, Easy Club. Followed by a rather fitting tune written by Finn, Luca and Dempsey, Counting the Days till Daddy Comes Home. This leads straight into Do You Know Something, a tune the boys wrote for their Granny’s 70th birthday. The set is finished off with the imaginative Macadonian. Harvest Home is a tune the boys are very fond of and have special sentiments for. Martin Wynes they took from We Banjo 3. The set finishes with two of the boys’ favourite tunes, Guns of the Magnificent 7 and The Cleveland Jig (boys name this as The James Bond Jig!).
March of the Min an Toitín Bull opens the next set, alongside Pressed for Time, written by Gordon Duncan, then rounded off with the infamous Star of the County Down, chosen specially by young Dempsey. Next we have unreel jigs with accompaniment by Rion Smyth from the Blue Man group, Independence which the boys learned from Matt Molloy to challenge Finn on the banjo. Moving Cloud, and Gan Anim lead up to the grand finale jig, Within a Mile of Dublin.
The boys and their dad Tommy play a host of instruments and make this a very lively collection. This collection of music is exploring The Byrne Brothers’ own compositions and some of their very favourite of all-time tunes.
Grainne McCool
CÒIG
Ashlar
Own Label, 10 Tracks, 46 Minutes
www.coig.ca
I’ve been following the musicians in Còig for a dozen or more years now, having first seen them as rising young stars of the Cape Breton scene at a Celtic Colours Festival showcase. Fiddlers Chrissy Crowley and Rachel Davis are now seasoned tradition bearers, as is their pianist Jason Roach, and where would Cape Breton music be without a driving piano? Add in the trad tenor banjo from Darren McMullen and you have a powerhouse quartet who can tackle anything form an Irish set to modern folk ballads. Check out their take on the Gordon Lightfoot ‘60’s classic Home From The Forest. Darren makes this his own, whilst Rachel features on Gàidhlig vocals on O Luaidh and in English on a David France co-write Deep Down In The River.
Còig were a huge hit at the Milwaukee Irish Fest in 2018 and this album shows us why, sensitive arrangements of gorgeous melodies and foot stomping old style tunes in for example, From The Old Tapes, a set of Strathspeys and Reels which distil the essence of Cape Breton music into 6 minutes. Then there’s carefully researched, autobiographical liner notes, full of interesting tales, like the one about Rachel’s great uncle trading cigarettes in Wartime Holland to bring home a fiddle for his brother. Ashlar refers to masonry that fits tightly together, and the cover shows a wall of many colours, as if Seán Scully had laid the blocks himself. Like the wall this album is full of colour, texture, sitting so well together, but it would, this is music built on strong foundations.
Seán Laffey
AOIBHEANN AND PAMELA QUEALLY
Beyond The Bellows and the Bow
Own Label, 14 Tracks, 46 Minutes
www.facebook.com/queallysistersmusic
Two young sisters from Clare, playing relaxed traditional music. In the liner notes they pay their respects to the late Mike Cahill, as a source of inspiration and encouragement when they began playing, that was way before their tenth birthdays. The girls are joined on the album by the now venerable Eoin O’Neill and what a delight it is to hear his bouzouki backing, he waits in the wings until the second selection of the opening track, a set of reels; Lads of Laois/Dinny O’Brien’s/ Pat Toughy’s, to bring in his accompaniment.
The tracks are taken at a gentle pace, ideal if you’d like to play along and an essential element in understating the lift and lilt of Clare music. Try their laconic Pigeon on the Gate, with its fiddle and bouzouki, moving into Sweeney’s Dream with Gearóid MacNamara on piano. There’s a swinging concertina and fiddle duet on the Sundays Well Waltz with backing from Shane Creed on finger picked guitar.
There is sibling unison playing on The Groves Hornpipe, Aoibheann learned the tune from the Kilfenora’s Tim Collins. The sisters are wide open to new influences picking up the Tribute to Larry Reynolds at a McGoldrick and Donnelly gig last year. The album closes with a set of three reels, Dr Gilbert’s, Jimmy’s Return and Miss Thornton’s. It’s pure Clare, it’s unhurried and deeply respectful music. The sisters surely have a bright future ahead of them.
Seán Laffey
SCREAMING ORPHANS
Life in a Carnival
Tir Chonaill Music, 12 Tracks, 44 Minutes
www.screamingorphans.com
Life in a Carnival is the 14th album from The Screaming Orphans. Having an eclectic range of influences, the Diver sisters from Donegal have an obvious passion for Irish traditional and céilí music, girl-pop such as The Bangles, and classic folk-rock like Simon and Garfunkel, and this new collection pulls all elements together to create melody driven songs with seriously infectious vocals.
As ever the girls stick with their roots but with a very real twist. Here we have a pop focus, original lyrics and a really feel-good, carnival-like vibe throughout. The 12 track collection combines a number of genres but always those traditional/folk roots at the core.
Opening with the lively Carnival then straight into the pop classic, Happy Together, we’re already smiling and dancing to the beat. Ordinary Woman is a real power song and inspiring and encouraging to all women in its lyrics. Guardian Angels, Loved and Lost, 1234 are all good mood ignition and just launch you into that summer carnival feeling. My Heart, Someday, Shine, Sunday Morning all have lyrics that we really do want to hear more of. The fiddle is ever present and although very summery in tone, the Irish roots shine through. Raise Up Your Glass and Scream will have you screaming loudly as they bring this album to a close. You just want to hear more.
Life in a Carnival takes you on an emotional journey with its music and lyrics. But at all times it will have you smiling and singing along. Each song tells a story and those Irish roots shine to the fore. This is a perfect choice to help raise those summer spirits and look forward to the carnival/festival season.
This is definitely something a little bit different. But very good different!
Grainne McCool
LAOISE O’BRIEN
The Child Ballads
Jiggery Pokery Productions, 14 Tracks, 46 Minutes
www.laoiseobrien.com
Francis James Child, first professor of English collated hundreds of ballads in the late 19th century, a bit of a butterfly collection, he saw them as examples of archaic literature. It wasn’t until the late 1950s that another American academic; Bertrand Harris Bronson published a four-volume work on the Tunes of the Child Ballads. And that opened the floodgates to the folk revivalists passion for new sounds from ancient sources. Run on 60 odd years and Laoise O’Brien has assembled an impressive team to re-imagine 14 of those Child Ballads in an Irish context.
O’Brien’s genius is writ large in the way she has selected her collaborators. They take centre stage on each song, you could consider O’Brien the best of hands on curators. Oisin Walsh Peelo sings Kempy Kane, an amalgam of two versions with a tune that is found in the Joyce Collection. He also applies his voice to Black Jack Davy a precursor of the Wraggle Taggle Gypsies. Malachy Robinson who is best known in the Irish classical world as a double bass player adds vocals and banjo to The Devil’s Nine Questions. He also shines in the Get Up and Bar the Door, a salutary tale of the dire consequences of not talking to each other.
Laoise’s recorder adds period patina to another set of tunes from the Joyce Collection Beer and Ale and Brandy; this is a duet by O’Brien on recorder and the tin whistle played by Fionn Ó nAlmnain with Oisin Walsh Peelo adding accompaniment on Irish harp.
This album is an intriguing project and one which could of course grow into many volumes. 14 tracks is merely a scratch on the full Child Collection, and with Laoise’s energy and imagination who knows what gems there are to be re-discovered.
Seán Laffey
RACHEL HAIR & RON JAPPY
Sparks, Own Label MHRCD005, 10 Tracks, 39 Minutes www.rachelhair.com
One of the new wave of harpists playing challenging melodies and arrangements on this ancient Celtic instrument, Rachel helped to establish a modern harp sound with her trio line-up, but on her fifth album she’s gone back to her roots, back to basics, back to the music she most loves to play. Together with guitarist Ron Jappy, Rachel presents traditional tunes from Scotland, Ireland, and the Isle of Man, that mysterious land of mermaids, Manx cats and millionaires whose culture is only now emerging from ages of neglect. Alongside these old melodies are many new compositions by Rachel and her contemporaries, with a modern skin on their ancient structures: jigs and reels, waltzes, hornpipes, and more.
Rachel’s technique is deceptively relaxed, broken chords and delayed gracenotes allowing her to produce the flowing music associated with the harp, but also the percussive dance rhythms of more contemporary folk. The Manx lullaby Arrane Y Chlean shows the beauty and charm of her playing, while her jig Mera’s Delight takes that Ellan Vannin character and turns it into a toe-tapping ceilidh favourite. Black Hair’d Lad, a set of storming Scottish reels, stretches any harpist’s dexterity. Dan Sullivan’s opens a trio of pugnacious polkas with the well-known Scartaglen and Munster Bank showing some fancy harp effects. Ron Jappy does sterling work on the dance tunes, and his fingerpicked accompaniment on Calum Stewart’s gentle Looking at a Rainbow is tantamount to a second harp. Try my personal favourites here: Jurby Jigs with their hedgehog spines, and The Proofreader which updates the category of syncopated stateside hornpipes like City of Savannah, President Garfield and Saratoga. Slow or fast, every track on Sparks is striking.
Alex Monaghan
APRIL VERCH
ONCE A DAY
Slab Town Records STR19-CD-01, 14 Tracks, 40 Minutes
www.aprilverch.com
If you were lucky enough to catch April Verch last year at the Fiddle Fair in Baltimore, I suspect you will be a fan. She’s lively, she plays Ottawa Valley traditional music and step dances, sometimes simultaneously. There’s another side to the diminutive musical atom bomb, as a young child she was immersed in the Canadian Country music scene. Initially she says it was her older sister who got to take part in the singing competitions, almost every summer weekend (Fleadh parents will sympathise). It was at one competition in Ontario that the young April learnt the words of Loretta Lynn’s You Aint Woman Enough, and so began her parallel journey into Country songs.
She’s travelled south to Nashville to record this album, with a bevy of the town’s finest joining in, luminaries such as Al Perkins on peddle steel, Jason Coleman on piano and Redd Volkaerrt on guitars.
Her choice of material reflects what was once the vogue in country music, songs of love and loss, with roots in the 19th century folk and parlour song tradition. Bill Anderson’s Once a Day opens the album, a true country classic having been a number one hit for Connie Smith in 1964. Verch’s version is truly her own, her voice is light, almost fragile, she inhabits the sad narrative where she is “only crying once a day” at her reflection on being jilted. She brings a plaintive presence to the Francophone The French Song, showing us that Country music is popular in Quebec. She picks up the fiddle for her own tune called Fiddling Under The Mistletoe, just the thing for a romantic slow dance at the parish hall next Christmas. This album has been an education for me, it puts country music into a different light and I could see every track on the disc being snapped up by dozens of local radio stations in Ireland.
Seán Laffey
EDGELARKS
Feathers
Own Label, 11 Tracks, 51 Minutes
www.philliphenryandhannahmartin.co.uk
Edgelarks is more than just a poetically appealing name for folk-duo, Hannah Martin & Phillip Henry. Feathers began with a decision born in the clarity of a Cumbrian retreat to write songs about hope. Bearing strong testament to the duo’s BBC folk-award status, this music rises beautifully to the lyricism evoked in the word Edgelarks.
Devon-born Hannah and Phillip are highly acclaimed traditional multi-instrumentalists & composers, their musical connection a delicious flow of compelling vocals, fiddle, banjo, lap-slide guitar, shruti box, stomp box, and beat-box-harmonica. All of that pools into a collective sound spilling over with tonal fluidity, the title track holding a musical quality that’s airborne and light. Things delicately subverted with keen philosophical eye – while based on finding (and cherishing) a feather that nobody can name in the middle of a stone circle. It’s never about airy-fairy new-ageism nor does it eschew ethical concerns in these uncertain times, but rather finds hope in the notion of enigma …. sealed in its mystery lie days of sky-lit flight…
Edgelarks is not just a pretty name either, but takes flight from the grounded reality of Hannah & Martin’s path through music; theirs the noble trail of the travelling troubadour tradition, literally walking-the-walk in artistic commitment. Lyrics textured with poetic sensibility, astute political concern, yet a transformative creative turn into silk-light songs that stand on their own beauty: ‘Here’s to the oyster that spins beauty out of pain…’ (Oyster later references Emily Dickinson).
Where I Stand is inspired by Ogham Stones, inscribed ancient Irish alphabet, still proliferate on the Irish landscape, this one particular to Dartmoor. Hannah gracefully links 2,000-year-old migration patterns into the present-day-plight of the Caribbean Windrush generation. Sensitive arrangements, pristine lyrics, brilliant liner notes. In their songs about hope, Edgelarks flickers candlelight onto our faith in the folk tradition.
Deirdre Cronin
BRASS LASSIE
Brass Lassie, Own Label, 10 Tracks, 47 Minutes
www.brasslassie.com
Refreshing, wide-ranging and highly entertaining, this collection of traditional pieces is interpreted by a combination of folk group, brass band and jazz ensemble. Think La Bottine Souriante goes Celtic, or Van Morrison plays Trad. It seems to be mainly Laura MacKenzie: this fluter, piper and singer is front and centre, and could be the Brass Lassie of the title with her burnished locks. Perhaps that name refers to the quartet of quines on horns of the reedless variety, two and a half of whom are brassy blondes. It certainly doesn’t apply to the backline of blokes on bass and banged things. Other groups have combined the Auld Country with the New World, but not quite like this.
While the sound ranges from lounge jazz to fiddle fever, the repertoire is pretty much Irish and Scottish traditional tunes and songs. Modern compositions from Liz Carroll and Ross Ainslie open proceedings with a hard-hitting Blues Sisters arrangement. Ian Hardie’s reel The Crown Knot, a harbinger of current hairstyles, becomes a funky circus number on concertina and bones, then a slinky swing fiddle piece. A medley of old Gaelic dance music follows, combining fiddle and flute lines, thumping bass and floaty step-dancing. The percussion is heard throughout and the other parts complement each other nicely: unforced vocals and mouth music, solid piano and bass, confident fiddle and woodwind, plus that brass.
The North American home of this group is evident in the choice of some material, Skip Healy’s jig The Return Home for example, but Brass Lassie also throw in a Latin samba and a set of Breton gavottes for good measure. There are plenty of samples on the website, something for everyone.
Alex Monaghan
EMILY JEAN FLACK
Throwing Shapes
Cranberry Music Inc. 5 Tracks, 22 Minutes
www.emilyjeanflack.com
Spanning the distance between Limerick and Ontario, musically and geographically, here are contemporary songs grounded in tradition. Throwing Shapes marks Irish-Canadian musician Emily Jean Flack’s debut. Her lovely soaring vocal quality, it somehow holds you rightaway. I like the feisty indicative start in Another Year Gone By; ‘She said she was a gambler, bettin’ on a sailor’s heart’, there’s a quirky lilt in pace and voice.
Contemporary lyrics that nail Emily Jean’s colours to the traditional nautical song’s mast, great twist in how third-person-narrative and strong backing beat now evoking empathy and connection between eras, today’s Woman wanting to somehow protect Maggie, subvert romantic folly.
Karen Flack of Celtic-Folk-Band Leahy is Emily Jean’s mother, ensuring rich early cultural immersions. Emily’s MA studies at the University of Limerick involved great mentors like Karen Casey. Across the tracks, musical assurance prevails, enhancing the explorative quality of the songs. Brilliant performances from Flook band-member Brian Finnegan, guitarist Marty Barry. Tender vulnerable quality in Tread Softly, deep undertones adding a jazz dimension. That textured duality echoed in Throwing Shapes, music doing justice to lyrics with good narrative strain. Song also reflects Emily Jean’s dancing background, life-affirming touch in going from ‘black & white’ photo mode to ‘dancing in colour’. A lovely EP.
Deirdre Cronin
LE VENT DU NORD
Territoires
Borealis Records BCD258,
13 Tracks, 50 Minutes
www.leventdunord.com
Formed in 2002 by Nicolas Boulerice (hurdy- gurdy, piano, vocals) and Simon Beaudry (bouzouki, guitar, vocals), the band has since been joined by Olivier Demers (fiddle, bombard, guitar, feet and vocals) and Réjean Brunet (bass, melodeon, bombard and vocals) and more recently in 2017 by André Brunet (fiddle, feet and vocals). Now as a quintet, that Le Vent du Nord, ambassador of traditional Quebec folk music, are touring all over the world and this new album, their tenth, is a big step in a new direction. The group performs music from the traditional repertoire as well as some original compositions by one or the other of the band’s musicians. They offer us a traditional music but arranged in a very contemporary, lively and energetic way.
Recorded last autumn in Notre-Dame-des-Prairies, a small town north of Montreal, Territoires includes thirteen tracks, songs and instrumentals, which tell us some short stories and the History of Quebec over the past centuries. Real or mythical places, places of creation or belonging, the territories are multiple.The album begins with a tribute to Samuel de Champlain with Le Pays De Samuel a fundamental figure in the History of Quebec. There is also Adieu du Village, which tells the story of Pierrick’s unfortunate love, or Le Soir Arrive, which celebrates eternal love. And then to mythical Chaousaro and its legendary creature. Several instrumentals are featured on the album Capitaine Cotillon, Le Step à Alexis, Turlute à Bassinette and Côte-Nord. On most of the songs Le Vent du Nord develops five-voice harmonies with the most beautiful effect. Step back and listen to Turlute a Bassinette, turlute is mouth music akin to Irish lilting. Here Le Vent Du Nord deconstruct the melody, with the instruments playing a phrase in turn, until they merge into a rousing ensemble, all along the foot percussion driving the tune to a magnificent harmonic chorale as the Turlute kicks in around three minuets 45 seconds into the five minute masterpiece.
In short this is an album that will become a reference in the world of traditional Quebec music, and no greater accolade is needed.
Philippe Cousin
