If you like your Celtic music to be intelligent, melodic, refined, largely word-free, and full of depth, then this is for  you.

 Label:     Vertical Records
 Time:     12 Tracks / 52 minutes

As a mainstay of bands like Capercaillie and Lunasa, as well as regularly teaming up with a host of like-minded musicians (watch out for a review of folk players covering disco anthems shortly!)  McGoldrick has impeccable credentials.

Eight years’ touring and recording with Mark Knopfler hasn’t done him any harm, either, and it is plain to see how well his pipes sound would work with Knopfler’s Local Hero type of material.
    
McGoldrick has a definite uncluttered and appealing style. His flute, pipes and low whistle work often interweaves with fiddles on Celtic instrumentals, but he always seems to aerate his music with space and then put a smooth sheen on it.

ARC is his first release since 2010, and it shows the results of waiting and planning. While the overall sound is light and easy on the ear, deeper listening reveals the depth of his arrangements and his liking for ever-changing time signatures.

So his tribute to the thousands of Irish immigrants who settled in one of Manchester’s poorest neighbourhoods in the 19th Century, “Angel Meadow” – a gentle cinematic air with strings backing – sits between “Black Swan on the Turlough,” where he shares plenty of lead lines with accordion, and a picked electric guitar-led jig in 7/8 with stabs of brass.

Then comes “Simon and Candy’s 50th Wedding Anniversary.” It begins as a relaxed piece in waltz time, but picks up the pace to grow more celebratory as it becomes “Coleman’s Cross.”

Only one track is that bit more different from the rest. “Bakanoba” is live Afrofunk, recorded at Celtic Connections, and features African vocals from Fatoumata Diawara. A track with more subtle international leanings is “Wassalou Rover,” which builds up in clear layers, so we can spot the marimba lurking beneath.

This is a personal selection: The name of the disc even comes from the initials of his three children. Some tracks were composed after time with friends, one after a trip to Cape Breton, and another set of lively jigs for his nieces. They flow together well and the warmth shines through.

If you like your Celtic music to be intelligent, melodic, refined, largely word-free, and full of depth, then this is for you.


Derek Walker
http://walkerwords.wordpress.com