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Cold Blow These Winter Winds - A Celtic Celebration Of Christmas
Green Linnet GLCD1228
It's That Time Of Year again and here's the first tinsel-twined folk offering to pop down the Folk & Acoustic chimney: the CD of a concert organised by piper/composer Rory Campbell (Old Blind Dogs, Deaf Shepherd), recorded live last December at Edinburgh's Queen's Hall with a crew of top artists from Scotland and the north of England. The project started out as a benefit performance for a leading cancer charity, was aired on BBC Radio Scotland on Christmas Day 2003, and now makes it to disk in time for this year's jollifications.
It's a mix of traditional carols, familiar songs and original compositions with no particular theme other than celebrating the season. A set of soulful-to-boogie piano and whistle Christmas tunes from Dave Milligan and Rory Campbell opens proceedings, Eliza Carthy contributes an acapella version of the traditional Dives And Lazarus and Rory McLeod delivers a typically quirky rendering of John Prine's Christmas In Prison.
The old Elvis hit Blue Christmas is revisited by Tim Matthew in a langorous, breathy vocal with harp and bass accompaniment while the excellent house band (Marianne Campbell on fiddle, drummer Donald Hay, Aaron Jones on bouzouki and bassist Kevin McGuire, along with Milligan on piano, and Rory C's pipes) support Andy Lang's fair crack at being Shane McGowan on Fairytale Of New York with Karine Polwart in the Kirsty MacColl role.
Personal highlights: the gorgeous vocal combinations of Karine Polwart, Corrina Hewat and Mary MacMaster on the atmospheric Lullay, Lullay (The Coventry Carol) and Christ Child's Lullaby; Milligan's piano throughout; the fiddle-led jazziness of Dean Owens' own Blue December. Lowlight: the final track, a country-ish ditty titled It's Christmas Time, also by Owens and sung by (at a guess) his young daughter Billie. It's well sung and surely heartwarming at the live event, but not the greatest finisher to this otherwise eclectic and entertaining album.
Mel McClellan - November 2004
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Folk & Acoustic
