Customer Reviews

Long Expectant Comes at Last

5 star:		(6)
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All trad joys gather here with success. Expect only the very best & no disappointments! 58:36 minutes, several original chunes, music's finest research, & the most heart of them all. Fresh oddities warming smiles all over, sweeping every foot to dance, giggling each heart with healing. After 3 All-Irelands & 33 years with the Boys of the Lough, Cathal is also touring as a flute duo, "Music from the Hearth." Authentication of the greatest integrity, creation of the most intense imagination: he is the Flower of Ireland: listen why!

With each listening, this cd yields more riches. It's full of melody, originality, idiosyncracy, variety, humor and real spirit. My nineteen month-old son (who also happens to be named Cathal) adores it. His favorite track is "The Hurricane of Reels".

This fine recording is so full of life and great musical spirit that it's hard to imagine someone not liking it. For the true fans of traditional music: hearty, satisfying fare. For someone ready to move beyond New Age Celtic or even just interested in exploring this music for the first time, a great place to start. I'd recommend this highly.
Note: wrote the above review 5 years ago: I still listen to this a lot - it still sounds great!

If you like this kind of music, this is the top of it's kind. Really beautiful throughout, and alternately haunting or light-hearted fun. I never go anywhere without toting this CD with me!

It's a real shame that McConnell did not make more solo albums/CD's like this one. I find a lot of modern "Celtic" music either overproduced (as one other reviewer noted) or else mind-numbingly repetitive. Not this! It is a surprisingly effective, and surprisingly timeless, rendition of traditional tunes on flute, whistle, and voice, sometimes solo, at times with accompanying instrumentation. The arrangements of the tunes and songs are original and very effective; at first they may seem deceptively simple but they will grow on you. I never get tired of this album and, as I said, only wish there had been more.

Not your typical music hall Irish music. I bought the CD because it has "There's the Day" which I had heard only once and thought it would be a nice singalong at a Ceidlich. These are tunes people probably play because they love them, not to make money. My kind of music. There are songs and fiddle tunes and they are fun to listen to. A great change from the overproduced studio recordings we get on the radio so much of the time.