Music » Celtic Music

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Release Date: 2001-03-13, Audio CD, Atma Classique

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During the early '90s, the Chieftains embarked upon a series of multigenre crossover recordings. Major pop stars were brought in as guest artists and a few had the goods, but others came across as wannabes or well-meaning if clueless PR victims. This Grammy-winning live album from 1992 features the Who's Roger Daltrey and American singer Nanci Griffith. Sadly, Griffith's husky, thin-textured voice is inadequate to the demands of Irish vocal ornamentation and phrasing. Daltrey, meanwhile, sounds raucous, unidiomatic, and amateurish; plus his presence with a traditional Irish music ensemble in the middle of British-occupied Belfast seems a bit much. In any case, courting comparison with the Chieftains' own singer, Kevin Conneff, is a risky business at best. The instrumentals are typically accomplished and future Riverdance diva Jean Butler provides charmingly percussive footwork, but the trap drummer on the last tune is glaringly out of place. --Christina Roden

It took Paddy Maloney 15 years and eight LPs to assemble the incarnation of the Chieftains that plays on Boil the Breakfast Early, the band's ninth release. When former Planxty and Bothy Band flautist Matt Malloy joined up, the Chieftains were finally able to perform with a stable roster. Ironically, this would be one of their last recordings of purely traditional material before they set off on the series of collaborations that was the hallmark of the band's recorded output in the 1980s and 1990s. But the collection of tunes here crackles with the sort of excitement that only the finest musicians can generate. The dance tunes are played with such verve and vivacity that even the most slothful listeners will start tapping their toes, while the slow airs fairly ache with a majestic melancholy. Boil the Breakfast Early shows the Chieftains at their unadulterated, traditional best. --Michael Simmons

Imagine a punk-rock Waterboys doing a better job of balancing their rock and acoustic incarnations, and you'll have a fix on this raggle-taggle, fiddle-driven U.K. quintet --Jeff Bateman

Release Date: 1992-03-20, Audio CD, Shanachie

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Release Date: 2001-11-13, Audio CD, Tara Records/Celtic

Release Date: 1993-10-19, Audio CD, Chameleon / Wea