O’ Please Play On

Sometimes the Corrs just don’t cut it. You’re listening to their synthesized pop standards and you just can’t take it anymore, begorrah! What you want isn’t going to be found in mellow love ballads with names like “I Never Loved You Anyway.” No, no, no.

What you want...is a jig. A reel. Something with some real “Oirish” spirit.

What you want is Altan’s Another Sky, the seventh studio album by the most successful Irish traditional band to emerge in the last decade. With a powerful combination of talented performers and soothing music, Altan weaves a Celtic tapestry that embraces the listener with sublime serenity. This isn’t to say that Another Sky is soporific, far from it. Like musical Ritalin, its tranquil melodies and otherworldly arrangements have the power to calm and soothe the most troubled heart.

The music of Altan is touching regardless of whether or not the listener is Irish or understands a word of Gaelic. High energy fiddling and masterful percussion get the feet tapping and the head nodding in enthusiastic rhythm. Breathy acoustic ballads are interwoven throughout, and lead singer Mairead Ni Mhaonaigh’s haunting vocals are nothing short of harmonic bliss. Steeped in the power of an ancient culture, this music is a wistful tribute to a peaceful time before memory.

“Island Girl” is a beautiful piece of poetic escapism, its stripped-down arrangements and liquid vocals capturing all the innocence of childhood fairy tales. Lyrics are disarmingly simple, though never simplistic, as in the singer’s gentle exhortations to “Don’t just cut off your heart/Keep it open and pure/Keep it free from hurt/And keep an open door.” Instrumental pieces are scattered throughout, lending a wordlessly comforting tone to the album. “The Ookpik Waltz” is a gentle, plaintive piece that perfectly captures a sense of peaceful longing (tradition has it that the Ookpik was an owl who carried away the souls of the dead on their final journey). “Girl From the North Country” is an example of music moving full circle. With the aid of guest musicians Jerry Douglas and James Hutchinson on dobro and bass, Altan gives its take on this 35-year-old Bob Dylan piece which was in turn partly inspired by a traditional song. Track seven packs all the clichés into the overlong title “Gusty’s Frolicks/Con Slip Jig/The Pretty Young Girls of Carrick/The Humours of Whiskey.” After Riverdance, Guinness and Southie, Ireland often seems in danger of becoming a mere caricature in American culture. Fortunately, Altan’s delightful interpretation of these jigs erases any such thoughts, leaving behind naught but the memory of that lovely fiddling. The opening track, “There’s a Fair Tomorrow (Beidh Aonach Amarach)” is a stirring jig in the same vein that successfully combines the floating vocals of Mhaonaigh with the assorted talents of the other members.

Another Sky is not without its faults. One can only take so many saccharine, happy, cloyingly idyllic tracks before going into insulin shock. As light evanescence is followed by more of the same, one yearns for some display of brutally raw feeling. Alas, sweetness and light is all that Altan has to offer, their skilled musical maneuverings failing to stray from the same emotional note. But all things told, while Another Sky may not be the pot of gold at the end of the musical rainbow, it’s still a fine piece o’ work.

Altan

Another Sky

Narada World