It has been a busy day of work, errands,
and volunteer activities, all on very little sleep. In all the recent excitement on these fronts I’ve
missed four workouts in the past two weeks as well, and that’s not sitting well
with me either.
That said I’m finally sitting where
I want to be – in the writer’s chair. It
may not be the next chapter of my novel, but it is writing for pleasure about a
topic I love, music. And today’s
sub-genre of that love will be folk music.
Disc 419 is…Choice Language
Artist: Capercaillie
Year of Release: 2003
What’s up with the Cover? A child’s hand grasps some kind of tall grass that I
can’t identify, with some random words floating up in the bottom of the
shot. This cover is attractive enough,
but nothing to write home about.
How I Came To Know It: I’ve been a fan of
Capercaillie since the late eighties, when I first discovered them. “Choice Language” is just me drilling through
their collection, although when this album came out I somehow missed it, and so
didn’t buy it until about five years later.
I think the band has only had two albums in the past ten years or so, so
their output has slowed quite a bit, although I haven’t done any post-modern
research about their lives that allows me to comment on why. I only know I miss them.
How It Stacks Up: I have nine Capercaillie albums, which is most of
them. “Choice Language” is not my
favourite, but it holds its own. I’ll
say it is around 7th or 8th best, but competition is
stiff.
Rating: 3 stars, but
close to 4
Even though “Choice Language” isn’t
an album I put on a lot, it is another strong entry, in the discography of the
band I consider to embody the best of pure Celtic folk music, Capercaillie.
As with all of their albums, “Choice
Language” gets its core from Karen Matheson’s exceptional vocals, pure as a
highland stream, and Charlie McKerron’s fiddle, as complex and brazen as a high
end Scotch.
Matheson’s voice shows no signs of
flagging with age, and on songs like “Little
Do They Know” and “Who Will Raise
Their Voice?” she is able to lift lyrics that in lesser hands might have
sounded clunky and trite.
Instead, these potentially
schlocky songs are two of my favourites.
Still, neither one matches the beauty of the even more traditional “I Will Set My Ship in Order,” a classic
ballad of ill-fated love. The song tells
the story of a sailor who comes to the casement window of his love, and says
that if her father and mother will allow it, he would marry her right then and
there, but he needs her answer right away.
In a lot of these Gaelic songs
(and there are a lot of these) the man pines away for the girl he cannot have,
with various tragic consequences.
Sometimes someone gets shot or stabbed, or the lovers run away together
and something equally awful results. This
one took a surprising turn when the man, denied at the window leaves
immediately. His love changes her mind
almost immediately, but before she can even get to the door to let him in, he’s
already gone.
I couldn’t help but think this guy
gave up pretty easily, although the whole ‘inconstant sailor’ is also a pretty
common folk song thing as well, I suppose.
Seeing him gone, the maid decides to push the bounds of over-reaction,
even for folk music:
"Come back, come back, my ain dear Johnny
Come back, come back and marry me"
"How can I come back and marry you, love?
Our ship is sailing on the sea"
"The fish may fly, and the seas run dry
The rocks may melt doon wi' the sun
And the working man may forget his labor
Before that my love returns again
"She's turned herself right roun' about
She's flung herself intae the sea
Farewell for aye, my ain dear Johnny
Ye'll ne'er hae tae come back to me"
I guess it just goes to show that
in Celtic folk music if someone loves someone else, they better get it sorted
out quickly, because one way or another tragedy is going to strike pretty
damned quickly otherwise.
Impressively, Matheson’s vocals are
so pure that they make you think this sort of youthful exuberance/idiocy is
actually not only reasonable, but inescapable.
But it isn’t just the vocals; she’s aided in her task by the understated
plucking of Manus Lunny on guitar, McKerron’s genius on fiddle and some whistle
instrument of indeterminate nature (hey, I’m an amateur) by Michael McGoldrick.
“I Will Set My Ship in Order” is timeless folk music that will not
just sound fresh in twenty years, but in two hundred years as well.
Equally beautiful is the Gaelic
song, “Nuair A Chì Thu Caileag Bhòidheach” or translated, “Whenever You See
a Pretty Girl,” which is a sparsely arranged and touching song that (when
translated) would be good advice for the couple in “I Will Set My Ship in Order”:
“Ach innse mi mar ghaol na h-òige (But I shall tell you of
the love of the young)
Mura bheil mo chòmhradh meallt (Unless I'm mistaken)
Théid e seachad mar na sgòthan (It passes like the clouds)
'S mar na neòil tha os ar cionn (And the stars above)”
You see, window jumpers, there are
other options out there.
Sadly, not all the tracks on “Choice
Language” achieve the same high standard of these two. They are generally good, but there are some
production decisions I can do without, particularly the sort of smooth jazz aesthetic
that is present in the background of some songs. This kind of over-relaxed noodling
occasionally takes away from Capercaillie’s efforts to create a more atmospheric
Pink Floyd feel, and pushes the music painfully close to easy listening. This is particularly painful in “Homer’s Reel” which has some amazing
fiddle playing that is ill paired with jazzy piano that is entirely out of
place on the record, or at least it should be.
It doesn’t happen often on “Choice
Language”, which is generally excellent throughout, but it does happen enough
to push the album down to three stars where it could’ve easily been four, given
everything else it has going for it.
Best tracks: Little Do They Know, The Sound of Sleat/The Fear/Dans
Plinn, Nuair A Chì Thu Caileag Bhòidheach (Whenever You See a Pretty Girl), I
Will Set My Ship in Order.
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