The Storm

Contract-filler is a dirty word in the music business. It's an expression used to describe a shabby or rushed record - a record that lacks commitment or interest on the musician's part.

Moving Hearts' posthumous offering The Storm, is by Donal Lunny's admission on Dave Fanning's Rock Show recently, an unashamed contract-filler. Nine months after their demise, the group have released an instrumental set, for the sole reason that they owed Tara Records an album.

For a start, the group's decision to go for an instrumental album left me with mixed feelings. Such terrific songs as 'Bridge Of Dreams', 'State Music', and 'Living It Up In America', should have brought Flo onto a final Hearts' album, while her absence means that a significant portion of the group's work will remain unrecorded. Also, I've often felt that the Hearts' instrumental tracks lose something in the studio - their live versions of 'Downtown' and 'MacBrides' on the last album are a monument to this.

Okay, today's lesson is How To Overcome The Handicaps Which Hinder The Contract-Filler. The lesson will be given by Moving Hearts (established musicians take note).

In a word, The Storm is superb. The six tracks are melodically rooted in Irish traditional music, but the distinctive Moving Hearts' sound brings them right into the eighties, without at all diminishing their timeless quality.

The group's marvellous live number. 'The Mutt And The Haggard', finally finds it way onto vinyl here, under the title of 'The Lark'. This thirteen-minute meister-work actually consists of seven tunes, but the transitions are so subtle that it could just as easily be one. The instrumentation is accomplished and vibrant, while the syncopated rhythms are nothing short of ingenious.

Donal Lunny's 'Tribute To Peadar O'Donnell' offers another finely wrought exposition of Moving Hearts' musical versatility. The piece moves from a beautiful, slow, modulating air on the uilleann pipes, to a faster whistle-tune eventually culminating in a beautiful piece on the synthesisers. This is music that you can almost feel.

The album's other four tracks are, if not an epic, still as polished and as finely-produced as the two longer tracks. (Listeners to Mark Cabney's 'Night Train' should recognise Mark's signature tune, 'May Morning Dew'). Written and arranged by Donal Lunny, Davy Spillane, and Eoghan O'Neill, or some combination of the same, all size tracks rely on the uilleann pipes or low whistle to provide the melody. Davy Spillane is almost the vocalist on 'The Storm', he wrings such extraordinary expressive noises from the pipes, and this immense talent shines throughout the album, with his writing and arranging contributions involving him in the music more than ever before.

And then, of course, there's Donal Lunny - perhaps, at once, the most complete and the most under-rated musician in Ireland today. Certainly the triumphs of 'The Storm' undermine the fact that the man is both an ingenious musician, and a very fine producer.

But enough of this flattery. Moving Hearts' break-up has bee well-mourned, and The Storm again reminds us of how fine this group were. We can only hope that their paths will cross again sometime in the future.

Knock 'em in the aisles, and leave 'em wanting more. Now that is how to handle a contract-filler. Class dismissed.