duggup

Artist: Loreena McKennitt
Website: www.quinlanroad.com/
Playback: mp3/flash

Nothing for NINE years and then two albums in what seems like an eye blink. Loreena McKennitt is one of those interesting musicians who tend to polarise an audience. You rarely find anyone who has heard her music that doesn’t have an opinion.

Now you can put me in the “I really like what she does” camp. The riff from The Bonny Swan is one of those all time killer guitar riffs that I fell in love with the second I heard it.

For those of you that haven’t heard the song let’s just take a moment to check it out, this is the Bonny Swan performance from the new “Nights from the Alhambra” album…

Love the guitar, and the Luis and Clarke carbon fibre violin. I am always in awe of the ensembles that she puts together for her live work. I waited for years for them to reissue “Live In Paris And Toronto” CD and thought it was well worth the wait when I finally got it but this new live album is even better.

OK for those of you still with me, let’s move onto Caravanseri is from her latest studio album, “An Ancient Muse”. Now this is a truly captivating track, there are enough lines and ideas in this one track for most people to make an album from, the ideas literally leap over one another wanting to be heard and rhythmically it just swings.

In case I have given the impression that this is a jumbled mess, nothing could be further from the truth. Here is Caravanseri from the “Nights from the Alhambra” album…

“If it’s got strings there is some one in there playing it” and yes it was a Luis and Clarke carbon fibre cello as well.

Now let’s have some hype from the website…

Aptly, it is an echo of Homer’s timeless Odyssey that introduces Loreena McKennitt’s seventh studio recording, the latest volume of a project she describes as “musical travel writing”. This time, the journey takes her in search of the Celts’ easternmost paths, from the plains of Mongolia to the kingdom of King Midas and the Byzantine Empire. Along the way, she muses on the concepts of home, of travel in all its incarnations, of the cultural intermingling that underpins human history and our universal legacies of conflict and hope.

Hmmm. Moving along.

I couldn’t leave with out one of my other all time favourites getting a mention and the killer live performance helps, here is Mummers Dance from the “Nights from the Alhambra” album…

This band ROCKS. I truly hope she tours this band to Australia, unlikely but I live in hope.

Both albums highly recommended. Especially “Nights from the Alhambra“.