eleased a little late for Valentine's Day but in plenty of time for St. Patrick's Day, the Chieftains' Tears of Stone continues the group's thirty-five year quest to prove to the world that there is more to traditional Irish music than Danny Boy.
TEARS OF STONE. The Chieftains. RCA Victor 09026-689968-2
eleased a little late for Valentine's Day but in plenty of time for St. Patrick's Day, the Chieftains' Tears of Stone continues the group's thirty-five year quest to prove to the world that there is more to traditional Irish music than Danny Boy.
Previous endeavors have presented the Chieftains blending their uilleann pipes, tin whistle, flute, fiddles, Irish harp and bodhrán (a drum) with Galician, Canadian maritime, American country, pop and classical music. This time around, the idea, according to bandleader Paddy Maloney's liner notes, is to "marry the many-faceted voices of contemporary women artists from around the world with the simple beauty of traditional Irish music." The results are at times hauntingly beautiful.
Tears of Stone begins with a W.B. Yeats poem, Never Give All the Heart, read by Irish actress Brenda Flicker and accompanied by ethereal music written by Maloney and performed by the choir Anúna. The poem, in its warning to women not to love too much or too freely, sets the tone for the rest of the album which tells the stories of women who did exactly that. The songs selected are primarily Irish love songs, showing love from the point of view of the women who get left behind when their men go off to fight, find work, carouse or just wander.
Although this is a Chieftains album, it is the voices of the guest artists that stand out, often performing a capella or with minimal instrumental accompaniment. Each guest is given the opportunity to showcase her own unique style and talent. Bonnie Raitt, singing A Stór Mo Chroí, accompanies herself on an acoustic slide guitar. On Jimmy Mó Mhíle Stór, it is the delicate vocal harmony of the three female singers of the Rankins that is spotlighted. Irish sister act, the Corrs, brings its own tin whistle, bodhrán, fiddle and hand claps to an upbeat, pop-inflected version of I Know My Love.
Joni Mitchell reprises her own song, The Magdalene Laundries, which deals with the cruelty of the nuns at a home for wayward women. The modal quality of her characteristic open-tuned guitar works well with the traditional Celtic instruments, and the addition of this instrumentation along with the Screaming Orphans Choir give the song more bite and power than the original version on Mitchell's own Turbulent Indigo album.
The oddest moment in Tears of Stone comes from a collaboration with Japanese singer Akiko Yano performing a composition written by her and Maloney that is playfully titled Sake in the Jar. The song begins with the beat of Japanese percussion announcing before the first note that this song employs a rhythm unlike any other on the album. Although one of the album's more upbeat tracks, this is not something you can clog to. The piece sounds more Oriental than Celtic and not just because it is sung in Japanese.
Of course, you can't have a Chieftains album that you can't dance to, and the boys in the band finally abandon their restraint and cut loose on a long instrumental reel called The Fiddling Ladies on which the band is joined by fiddlers Natalie MacMaster, Máire Breatnach and Annbjorg Lien, classical violinist Eileen Ivers, a piano, a couple guitars and an African drum called a djembe. The result is a wild, uplifting tour de force in which the musicians show their chops and inspire listeners to get up and dance by throwing in their own heel-clacking and howls of delight.
Finally, perhaps as a concession to those with a more pedestrian view of Irish music, the album closes with jazz stylist Diana Krall's rendition of Danny Boy. The combination of the uillean pipes a-calling and Ms. Krall's smoky vocals backed by jazz guitar accompaniment works pretty well until the number turns hokey with the unnecessary addition of a gospel choir. Maybe it's the song that makes excessive sentimentality irresistible. Whatever the reason, it is an unfortunate turn for the worse when, for the better part of an hour, the Chieftains and their guests have shown us that Irish music can be sad and beautiful without being schmaltzy. At least it gives those who celebrate their real or imagined Irish roots by donning green plastic hats and dribbling green beer down their chins something to sing along with.
Other than this relatively minor over-production, Ms. Krall's tortuously slow, gut-wrenching rendition of a song that deals with a love that lives even beyond the grave provides an appropriate ending to what is truly, as Maloney writes, a "labor of love."
Bruce Hoffman is OnLine Editor for The Pittsburgh Quarterly. He has always wanted to include music reviews in TPQ OnLine and after writing this one decided it was as good a place as any to start.
