Edge of Silence

Now, I'm not one of those Celtic Music purists who has a spasm when a favourite group adds a drumkit or explores a different path. I really like the places that artists like Capercaille and Eileen Ivers have taken the music. So it's not just the fact that Solas has gone in a much different direction that bothers me. It's the fact that they didn't do it very well. When I listened to this album, I was bored.

Even on _The Hour Before the Dawn_ I didn't much like Dierdre Scanlan's vocals. Here they are even more limp and unappealing than they were there. I am not much of a fan of singer-songwriters either, and as every song was a cover of something in this genre they really didn't do anything for me. Seamus Egan's legendary instrumentals, where they even appear, are so over-produced and awash in studio effects that they are painful to listen to. A lot of Celtic bands who take the fusion path make the mistake of mixing their CDs like rock CDs, with the rhythm section drowning out the melody lines. I wouldn't have expected Solas to do this, but they did, and it was a real disservice to what might otherwise have been an interesting progression.

I can certainly understand a band's desire to do something different and not be chained to a previous sound, but it's a shocking disappointment to see so much talent wasted on a travesty like this. _The Edge of Silence_ is the kind of CD that makes you wonder what the band thought they were accomplishing. Skip it.

I don't have any problem with an ostensibly Celtic band covering pop tunes. The Bothy Band and Planxty were covering Bob Dylan in the 70s. Old Blind Dogs does a wonderfully haunting cover of Dylan's "Ballad of Hollis Brown" on the Legacy CD. Whirligig covers the B-52s credibly, for Pete's sake. But Solas's arrangement of Dylan's "Dignity" just lies there and the song seems to go on and on. I find their taste in singer-songwriters to be all over the place. Nick Drake ("Clothes of Sand") is, of course wonderful (albeit trendy now), but this Antje Duvekot ("Black Annis" and "Poisonjester's Mask") reminds me of Stevie Nicks and that is NOT a good thing (sorry Martha).

This is Win Horan and Seamus Egan's band, so I will hold them responsible for this drift toward adult contemporary dreck. Especially after hearing the new Win Horan solo CD. Good Celtic music has bite, drive, menace, and melancholy. The only thing that Solas has left is the melancholy and even that is more melodrama than truly moving. They have become slick and mannered, which is very disspiriting when you compare this CD to their earlier work.

I am beginning to believe that Karan Casey was the soul of the band. Her solo CD ("And the Wind Begins to Sing") is gorgeous. The departure of John Doyle has not helped matters either. His own solo album sticks to fairly traditional territory, but his work with Eileen Ivers explores popularization in a different way. Whereas the post-Doyle Solas employs pop music devices in an attempt to evoke some sort of seriousness-in-capital-letters, Eileen Ivers just wants to rock out. Ivers' is going in the wrong direction by heading for Vegas. Solas is going in the wrong direction by heading for LA.

This is not to say that The Edge of Silence is not worth listening to. Standout songs include the aforementioned "Clothes of Sand", sung beautifully by Mick McCauley, the accordion player, of all people. Deirdre Scanlan's rendering of Jesse Colin Young's "Darkess, Darkness" is haunting and was even better at a recent concert than it is on the CD. Of the tunes I find Egan's "Who's In What Now" and McCauley's "Beck Street" to be the most compelling. As much as I like Win Horan as a fiddler, I find her compositions to be too influenced by shop-worn pop conventions.