I’ve had a mostly fun weekend,
although yesterday I badly pulled my quad muscle playing Ultimate. In hindsight, it was cold, and I should’ve
warmed up a bit more than I did. I’m not
getting any younger. I’m going to take
it easy this week with fingers crossed I’m ready to go next Saturday.
As for music reviews, no leg
muscles are required so I’m ready to go right now.
Disc 503 is… Beautiful Wasteland
Year of Release: 1997
What’s up with the Cover? Capercaillie seated in some warm climate (likely
Spain, given the liner notes). The band
is displaying an exceptionally wide range of terrible fashion decisions, from
the reflective aviator sunglasses to Karen Matheson’s ill-considered footwear. The whole scene is viewed through some sort
of James Bond tracking circle, apparently composed of barf. On the plus side the royal blue background is
nice.
How I Came To Know It: This was just me digging through Capercaillie’s
library. I bought this album fairly
late, I think at the same time I bought the previous year’s release, “To The
Moon” which is a far superior effort.
How It Stacks Up: I have nine Capercaillie albums, which isn’t all of
their work, but is certainly a lot of it.
“Beautiful Wasteland” is either at or near the bottom, so 8th
or 9th.
Rating: 2 stars but almost 3
I
imagine a beautiful wasteland would be stark yet inspiring; like a desert or a
lonely heath. In this context, “Beautiful
Wasteland” is a poorly titled album, because it is overpopulated with
extraneous sounds that inspire only intermittently.
The
album is a mix of traditional Celtic arrangements, world beats (North African
traditional chants) and new age production.
The band claims that the chants from Guinea form a ‘natural marriage”
with their music which I think is true rhythmically, but otherwise jarring to
the overall mood.
If that
is your thing, then “Beautiful Wasteland” is going to make you very happy, but
if you’re looking for contemporary Celtic folk music in a more pure form (as I
was) then the album is going to be maddeningly unfocused.
Fortunately,
Charlie McKerron is one of the world’s finest fiddle players, and his work will
always inspire. That said he shouldn’t
have to work so hard to be heard. On “The Tree” – an updated traditional song –
he manages to rise above the sort of new age mood the band surrounds his work
with. The fiddle melody in this song is
awesome but I wanted to hear more of it.
The way the song is arranged it always felt like he was getting cut off
before he got going. Still, even a
little Charlie is worth the price of admission.
On songs
like “A Mur Gorm” the band’s other
star, vocalist Karen Matheson, contends with the same challenges. The song,
which translates as “The Blue Rampart,”
is a beautiful mood piece but it needs a little more wasteland to be
perfect. It has too many odd piano
flourishes or strangely placed bits of flute whimsy. Some of this would be OK (anyone who has
heard overly didactic folk music will know that you can go just as badly wrong
in the other direction). I would have
done just a little less if I’d been in the studio with them.
The
lyrics to “A Mur Gorm” are beautiful
and awkward in that way translations can sometimes be. Here are the first two verses, first in
Gaelic. FYI, the Cuillins are a series
of mountains on the Isle of Skye:
“Mur b'e thusa bhiodh an
Cuilithionn
'Na mhur eagarra gorm
Ag crioslachadh le bhalla-criche
Na tha 'nam chridhe borb
“Mur b'e thusa bhiodh a'ghaineamh
Tha'n Talasgar dumhail geal
'Na clar biothbuan do mo dhuilean
Air nach tilleadh an run-ghath”
And then
translated:
“But for you the Cuillin would be
An exact and serrated blue
rampart
Girdling with its march-wall
All that is in my barbarous heart
“But for you the sand
That is in Talisker, compact and
white
Would be a measureless plain to
my expectations
And on it the spear desire would
not turn back”
Now this
is how you do romance. Also, while
Talisker is no doubt a place, it is also a Scotch. If I was pining for my anxious and yearning
lover to scale some mountain peaks with a spear of desire, it would be great to
have some single malt while I waited.
Less
enjoyable is “Shelter,” which is
apparently about some more modern societal malaise but it is hard to figure out
exactly what it is about. Also I found
the mixed metaphor in the chorus to be distracting:
“This ain’t no ark of Noah
No mockery of history
A taxi ride to nowhere
Just a drifting boat at sea.”
If you’re
going to go with the Noah’s ark/drifting boat analogy I wish you all the best,
but don’t confuse it with a taxi ride to nowhere, which is quite a different
thing thematically. The song itself
seems equally forced, with a chord progression that I think is designed to make
you feel uneasy but just comes across as awkward.
Not so “Hebridean Halle-Bopp” which takes its
inspiration from the passage of the comet Halle-Bopp the year “Beautiful
Wasteland” came out. While I have no
idea what the lyrics are about, the tune captures the energy and cosmic
connectedness of the event.
The
album ends on a high note, with “Sardinia”
a song written by McKerron that has a gorgeous ear-worm of a fiddle reel within
it. At this stage of their careers
Capercaillie will never settle for just a fine fiddle reel, and there are more
new age production elements thrown in as well.
Here they work, tastefully serving the song and letting the fiddle cut
across the top, like it is designed to do.
Overall
this record is uneven and in places strained.
At 56 minutes of playing time, I think it might have benefited from
cutting a couple of the lesser tracks.
That said, it has moments of greatness and even a lesser Capercaillie
album is better than most of the contemporary folk music out there right
now. I won’t be selling this album, even
though I’ll likely be continuing to give my other Capercaillie albums more time
in the rotation.
No comments:
Post a Comment