River of Sound

VARIOUS ARTISTS: “River of Sound” (Virgin)

Like Declan Lynch, I’m a De Danann more than a Chieftains man, a distinction not far removed from the battles of Sixties fans as to whether the Stones or the Beatles were best. So no disrespect to Mr. Maloney’s team but despite the Chieftains’ long-standing association with Jagger, Richards and Co., those with an ear for bluesier, grittier sounds have always tended to gravitate towards the Galway gang.

An apparently irrelevant intro? Perhaps, but if you’ve any appreciation of what I mean about this Chieftains/ De Danann distinction, you’ll find this compilation will be more acceptable to members of the former rather than the latter clan even though Frankie Gavin and Mairtin O’Connor hurtle through the penultimate track will all their usual bucaneering swagger.

This compilation may not necessarily reflect all the musical contents of the ambitious seven-part television series on Irish music but a fair portion of the tracks here do move the tradition out of the back-bar into the front drawing-room and out of the snug into the conservatory, a transition with which this writer has never felt entirely comfortable. This doesn’t mean that Irish music shouldn’t change and grow; it’s just that I wouldn’t dash down the road to which this album’s signposts point.

Traditionalists can rightly claim that rock may have sometimes had a baleful influence on the music but I’m not convinced that dressing it up in classical finery is a superior if – and perhaps, because – classier option. As ever, Carolan is claimed as precedent but playing for spendthrift, roistering Anglo-Irish squires is not the same kettle of poached turbot in champagne sauce as looking for the good word and awards of Dr. A.J.F. O’Reilly.

Besides, we’re not talking Bela Bartok, here. In Ireland, tradition usually gets married into the seemlier side of the classical family when it reflected Augustan and Victorian bourgeois order. So when the series’ presenter, Micheal Ó’Súilleabáain sets up the Irish Chamber Orchestra beside his own piano, Mairtin Ó’Connor’s box and Martin Murray’s mandolin, the result is little more than superior and more Celtically tasteful testcard fare.

And while two other pieces, the opening ‘Ah Sweet Dancer’ and the title track are more impressive, they won’t replace Charles Mingus’ large-band pieces – really the blues and Bartok – on my turntable. There’s too much sweetness for my musical palate; the spicier tones don’t feature in these recipes. And ‘Pulsus’, masterminded by bodhrán man, Mel Mercier is an academic and less than propelling exercize in rhythm whose borrowing from Shiela Chandra flatters neither her nor its players.

But don’t fret; the remaining tracks have their full share of mighty moments. Altan’s Ciaran Tourish and Dermot Byrne put on full sail for ‘Johnny Doherty’s’; Eileen Ivers’ public profile will quite properly gain from her ‘Three Reels’; and the album’s bias to the new generation of players also benefits Niall Vallely with his stirring concertina playing on ‘The Roaring Water Reels’.

And as Pat Kenny always says, there is more. Again, it’s the new breed who lead. There’s Iarla O Lionaird’s cloud-struck sean nos on ‘Caoineadh na dTri Mhuire’; Laoise Kelly reviving the harp on her ‘Three Jigs’; and Brendan Power with Mick Kinsella, reappropriating the harmonica as a traditional instrument on his ‘The Real Blues Reel’. And at the close, Ronan Browne shows you needn’t wait for the bus-pass to be a piping maestro on ‘Port Na bPucai’.

More familiar names like Begley and Cooney also have their cameos. But the last is far from least; Christy Moore with a new song, ‘The Two Conneeleys’, an elegy for two drowned Aran fishermen. Not only does it give a social context that tends to be lost through oversight on this album but it’s also prime Moore with Ó’Súilleabháin’s piano accompaniment, dreamed up on the spot in an informal session, the perfect frame.

A River Of Sound has many special moments but outsiders should treat this sampler with care. I understand Hummingbird hope to release a second album from the creels of music they recorded for this series. If it appears, it may be the better bet.

• Bill Graham