Search - Various Artists :: Flight of the Green Linnet

An excellent introduction to modern-sounding Celtic music

09/20/1998

(5 out of 5 stars)

"When I first tried this collection in 1989 it was a vigorous introduction to contemporary Celtic music. Relativity lead the set with a joyous song that has it all: harmony in Gaelic, a fast tempo, synthesizers, and none of the old folks' stuff. Then there is some more traditional stuff which I came to like in time, but Andy Stewart's Parish of Dunkeld, if you can make out any of the words, is an immediately funny, irreverent ballad that shows off his singing range. The Tannahill Weavers, on this album, put on one of their infectious lively renditions of too often boring pipes-and-accordion dance music. This stuff is for making converts. No Celtic set would be complete without some weepy tragedy, and that's here too: Kornog, on Helen of Kirkconnell, do a slow sing-song tale I still can't piece together. Jack Haggerty (Touchstone) is another tragedy about a longshoreman who loves a black-haired, black-hearted woman and bleeds for it, in a more accessible upbeat musical style. And that underscores what the compilers were doing, putting together their music that mostly appeals to ears tuned to 80s pop, yet packing a lot of tradition. In contrast, "Green Linnet's 20th Anniversary" package (1996) digs back into stuffier styles and doesn't hit this target. "Flight of the Green Linnet" is both a crowd-pleaser and a mind-opener."