Disc 282 is...An Ancient Muse
Artist: Loreena McKennitt
Year of Release: 2006
What’s Up With The Cover?: It looks like the tent that some lord from the middle ages would use when travelling with his army. In any event, this is one awesome album cover, and a huge improvement over previous ones like this, or this.
How I Came To Know It: I have been a fan of Loreena McKennitt for many years, so this was just me buying her new album - and excited to do so, as there had been a gap of almost 10 years. This particular album sat for a long time on my shelf, after I gave it a couple listens and decided it didn't sit well with me. In the past year, I've been putting it on as mood music for my other writing. In the process, it has slowly won me over to its charms.
How It Stacks Up: I have six Loreena McKennitt albums, although I'm soon to have seven, as I see she's put one out last year. For now, six - all of them good. Of a good bunch, I must reluctantly put "An Ancient Muse" into last place, amid stiff competition.
Rating: 3 stars.
I've covered the general information on Loreena McKennitt in previous reviews, but a quick recap that she is a Canadian celtic/new age artist who can play the harp with the best of them, and sings like an angel.
"An Ancient Muse" was McKennitt's first release in almost ten years - a gap caused by the sudden and tragic death of her fiancee in a boating accident in 1998. Nothing could ever replace that, and I have often taken a moment to send some kind thoughts to McKennitt at that time. Being a new-agey type, I hope she got them.
Like Neil Peart from Rush - who also suffered a tragic loss of family - McKennitt took a long time soul searching before she decided to seriously return to music. I'm glad she did come back, as "An Ancient Muse" demonstrates that she still has the knack.
This album finds her still tracing the Celtic peoples roots across Eurasia, absorbing different musical influences along the way. By the release of this album, she has been doing this to varying degrees on her previous three records, so if you are expecting straight ahead Celtic folk music, you will be surprised at what you hear instead - but not disappointed.
Every McKennitt album has some piece of literature that she has set to music, and "An Ancient Muse" is no exception. For this record, she adapts Sir Walter Scott's ballad, "The English Ladye and the Knight", the story of a woman poisoned by her brother so that she will not marry her lover. The brother in turn gets his, as the lover stabs him through the heart. As Scott admonishes:
"So perish all would true love part
That love may still be lord of all!"
Love may be lord of all, but it is a depressing reign if everyone gets stabbed and poisoned. Nevertheles, it is a pretty song, and often her poetic adaptations end up as my favourites. I was interested to find the songs I liked even more were McKennitt writing both lyrics and music.
"Penelope's Song" is a mythical reference to Odysseus' famous wife, waiting for him to return to her from the Trojan War. It is an oft-covered story, and the focus on Penelope's perspective a fairly popular approach in the 20th century, but I like what McKennitt brings to the story. The song begins with Penelope making an oath to her husband, lost on the other side of the world:
"Now that the time has come
Soon gone is the day
There upon some distant shore
You'll hear me say
"'Long as the day in the summer time
Deep as the wine-dark sea
I'll keep youre heart with mine
Till you come to me."
FYI - oaths are a big deal in the ancient world (I wish they were as important in the modern one). These lyrics aren't particularly special, but I like that McKennitt uses Homeric structures (such as the grouped phrase 'wine-dark sea'), and with the help of the music, the whole takes on a beautiful longing quality that takes the listener to another world, as we stand on a cliff face with Penelope, pining for the man who has been gone for twenty years.
The other song I love on this record is "Beneath A Phrygian Sky", which is a nine and half minute epic where McKennitt muses on the history of the land of ancient Phrygia (central western Turkey, on the Anatolian Peninsula). Emotionally, it reminds me of Neil Peart's lyrics for "Tai Shan" and how you can become overwhelmed when standing on an ancient land, thinking of all that has happened there.
Given that Phrygia has suffered more than its share of armies criss-crossing it, McKennitt's song begins by focusing on the terrible waste of human violence:
"My mind was called across the years
Of rages and of strife
And all the human misery
And all the waste of life."
The song transitions away from this early sadness, however, toward an understanding that sometimes conflict is needed if liberty is to be defended, and after that, we've all gotta learn to love each other in this crazy world.
In contrast to the bad drumming on the Wallflowers album I just reviewed, the measured - even haunting - drumming on "Beneath A Phrygian Sky" is key to setting the tone as we slowly transition from historical grievances to hope. Listening to McKennitt, I always feel like that is possible.
While this album has less stand out tracks than some, the overall mood is beautiful. It is like wading into a fast moving stream in a mountain. Cold at first, with treacherous footing, but soon enough refreshing and invigorating if you stay in long enough and get your bearings.
Just have a towel handy, and use the buddy system. A Creative Maelstrom doesn't want anyone catching hypothermia while looking for enlightenment.
Best tracks: The English Ladye and the Knight, Penelope's Song, Beneath A Phrygian Sky, Never Ending Road (Amhran Duit)
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