Turning Tide

Solas - Turning Tide

Turning Tide
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CD Details

Artist: Solas
Edition: Music CD
Audio: English (Unknown)
CD Release Date: 2010-02-16
Music Label: Compass Records
Soundtracks:
  1. Hugo's Big Reel
  2. Poor Ditching Boy
  3. Crows Set, The (Jig and 3 reels)
  4. Girl in the War
  5. A Waltz For Mairead
  6. The Ghost of Tom Joad
  7. A Sailor's Life
  8. Grady Fernando Comes To Town
  9. Sadhbh Ni Bhruineallaigh
  10. Trip to Kareol
  11. Sorry
  12. A Tune For Rowan

Music reviews of Turning Tide

Music Review: Consistent blend of folksier with Irish trad originals and new tunes
Rating: 4 Stars

This veteran Irish American band merges traditional with folk tunes. Fourteen years on, they provide consistent, accessible interpretations of standards, along with original songs in the Irish style, and on this new CD, covers of Bruce Springsteen, Richard Thompson, Josh Ritter, and Karen Polwart.

This broad approach places their style at the middle of the road. Séamus Egan favors in his multi-instrumental leadership a clean, lush, friendly sound. Little of the darker, somber qualities shroud this music for long. Although their covers are, respectively for the artists above, "The Ghost of Tom Joad," "The Poor Ditching Boy," "A Girl in the War," and "Sorry," these socially aware lyrical themes seem novel as conveyed through the soft vocals of recent recruit Máiread Phelan.

Phelan's breathy, whispery delivery expressing Tom Joad's "a hole in the belly, a gun in my hand" forces listeners to reconsider how we react to such a violent tale of revenge in the name of justice. She does not switch the gender of Thompson's lament, and hearing "she cut me through to my bones" likewise catches the audience off-guard. While I am not sure if this was the intended effect of singer matched with these songs, it makes for a more unexpected encounter with venerable folk themes of discontent. Softening their punch, it freshens their sting.

Session musicians on acoustic and electric bass and on drums move some songs towards a mainstream, studio-friendly ambiance. They smooth off the rough edges other Irish bands keep, and this may please or displease aficionados of this genre. Winifred Horan's fiddle, Mick McAuley's accordion and concertina, Éamon McElholm's guitar and keyboards provide modest rather than bold backing on many tunes. They create an ambiance of contentment despite the discontent sung about in the cover songs.

"A Sailor's Life," far shorter than Thompson's former bandmates in Fairport Convention had adapted, waltzes and reels, and the gentle closing guitar-based "A Tune for Roan" show other directions for the band, closer to their previous albums. Solas, whose name means "light" in Irish, tends towards sunniness. Despite the waves that grace the inside folds of this compact disc's presentation, the musical forecast again proves to be brighter.
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Description of Turning Tide

For over a decade, SOLAS has been recognized as the most influential Irish-American super group. On THE TURNING TIDE, the band delivers the raw instrumental virtuosity, the power, the rhythmic 'hump', and the dynamic vocal blend that no other band since The Bothy Band has mastered. THE TURNING TIDE offers well-conceived set of tunes and songs that share an underlying theme of social commentary. Renditions of Josh Ritter's 'Girl The War', Bruce Springsteen's 'The Ghost of Tom Joad', and Richard Thompson's 'Poor Ditching Boy' are as topical and engaging as anything SOLAS has ever done.

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