This is my third album in a row
from the nineties, which continues to outpace all the other decades in the CD Odyssey.
The nineties weren’t a better decade for music than any other, but I guess I
bought a lot of music during those years, so it is slightly over-represented.
This next album has been in my
collection since it came out.
Disc 549 is…. Closer to Paradise
Artist: The Barra
MacNeils
Year of Release: 1993
What’s up with the Cover? The band, with an artsy fade out around the edges to
make everything look a bit antique, just like us folk fans like it.
How I Came To Know It: I think I saw a video for “Darling Be Home” on CMT or something, loved it and decided to give
them a chance on limited knowledge.
How It Stacks Up: I have only this one Barra MacNeils album, so it
can’t really stack up. I used to also
have 1995’s “The Question” but it never really found a place in my heart, and I
sold it years ago with no regrets.
Rating: 4 stars
It has been years since this album was part of my heavy
listening rotation, but when I first bought it I played the hell out of
it. Even now, it sounds so familiar it
was hard to concentrate hard enough to have anything to say. The songs are so well known to my ear they
want to just blend into the general environment of wherever I am, but I made a
conscious effort to give it my active ear over the last couple of days. And my efforts were well rewarded too,
because “Closer to Paradise” is a brilliant folk album.
Like so many great Canadian folk acts, the Barra MacNeils
hail from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, which seems to export musicians like France
exports wine. They are a family act,
like the Rankins; less famous but with that same easy and free music that makes
you hear the sea in the background and sets your heart at ease.
They have two vocalists, one male and one female and
I like both equally. Lucy MacNeil has a
pure and honest voice, which lacks much edge but suits the band’s style
perfectly. The other vocalist is one of
the group’s three brothers, but I’ll be damned if I know who it is. Whoever he is, his voice is a nice tenor with
a slight vibrato in it, again, relaxed but powerful.
The music is uncomplicated but well played, the way
traditional folk music should sound. It
also has a professional production quality to it that I appreciate. Like punk rock, a lot of folk musicians think
that in order to have believability the music has to sound like it was hammered
out inside a tin drum on a single take.
To my mind, there’s nothing wrong with taking some time in the studio to
make the recording as good as it can be.
No auto-tune or excessive meddling, mind you, just a quality recording
environment to let the music shine.
As noted earlier, I fell for this album because of “Darling Be Home,” a song with a female
lead, pining for her man to return to her from a trip away. Hearing this song makes me miss my own wife
(right now she’s out at a meeting, but it wouldn’t matter if she were down the
hall or in Guam, the song makes me miss her).
It is a pretty and simple song, and I’ve heard it a thousand times, but
I did manage to notice something new this time around.
It was the odd lyrics. They strike the appropriate pining tone, but
on this listen I realized how much they reminded me of Ronnie James Dio lyrics;
sort of ridiculous and yet somehow strangely meaningful:
“Go and beat your crazy head
against the sky
Try and see beyond the houses in
your eyes
It’s OK to shoot the moon
But darling be home soon.”
I think I was with them up to “shoot the moon.” I assume it
means ‘pursue your dream’ but it had me thinking of riding tigers and seeing
rainbows in the dark. As far as I’m
concerned, they’re all worthwhile activities, except maybe beating your crazy
head against the sky. That doesn’t seem
like it would be terribly rewarding.
The album has a good mix of new and traditional
songs, and I’m happy to say the Barra MacNeil’s original stuff is as good or
better as any of the traditional fare. I’ve
said it on previous reviews, and I’ll say it again; the hallmark of a great
folk song is that it sounds timeless, leaving you unsure whether it was written
last year or last century.
Case in point is “Caledonia” a cover of a Dougie MacLean song that is neither young
nor old in the folk lexicon (it was written in 1977). The song is about missing the old country
(Caledonia being another name for Scotland).
I just listened for the first time to the original and it is pretty
enough, but it really sores with Lucy MacNeil’s voice. The song turns the pining for human
relationships expressed in “Darling Be
Home” into a love of homeland. I was
in Scotland in 1996, and hearing “Caledonia”
always makes me want to go back.
Not everything on “Closer to Paradise” is wan and
wistful, though. The song selection ranges
all over, from the history of east coast rum runners in “Chase the Man” to songs about the simple love of music like “Dancing We Would Go.”
As a very novice guitar player, “Dancing We Would Go” appeals to me. I particularly like this section:
“If all I had was money
Jewels were all I owned
Spend it in a hurry
Sell the shiny stones
Buy myself a fiddle
Fiddle with a bow
Call up all the neighbours
Dancing we would go.”
No matter how much money I had – it would still be
music I’d want to be doing, and that’s the great thing about music. Rich or poor, it’s there for you.
And over the years, this album has been there for me
as well, just like an old guitar it is always waiting for me to pick it up, and
enjoy it all over again.
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