This album will be judged in the light of Dervish's Eurovision folly; and I’ve heard it written off by some who haven’t yet heard it. So what’s it really like? The signs, on the face of it, aren’t promising. Basic tracks recorded live, different producers for the songs and the sets. Sounds messy doesn’t it?
What it is, though, is moody, soulful and epic. Following the lead of 2004's Spirit, there's increasingly little here for the trad purist and instead you get a group refusing to be pigeonholed and opening themselves up instrumentally, so that every track breathes. Although the album’s title refers tongue-in-cheek to the fact that they travel relentlessly, most of the collaborators are from the Sligo hinterland, and even a guest performance from a couple of the Dukhs was recorded there. But this has nothing to do with parochialism and all to do with the ability to find greatness close to home.
Far more than on any previous album, Cathy Jordan is at the forefront and she shreds the rulebook and pulls, from God knows where, the best vocal performances of her career. The highpoints are the band’s take on Suzanne Vega’s ‘The Queen And The Soldier’ and Dan Frechette’s ‘My Bride And I’ where the vocals soar and weave over the expansive, blissful instrumentals.
Dervish have a passion, at times almost a messianic zeal, to meld the accessibility of pop with the richness of traditional music – and while they haven’t yet cracked that, they’re still the band most likely to.