If you're like me, you probably like things done a certain way. Spaghetti with meatballs. Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin. Baseball in the sunshine without the designated hitter. Nowhere is this more true than with music. We all have songs that are personal favorites, many of them tied in our memory's ear to a particular event or emotion in our lives. That's why, for most of us, the first version of a song that we hear, if we like it, is the version we'll always prefer over any which follow.

So it is with musicians, and oftimes with their songs. Thus it was with no small amount of reluctance that I picked up Shadow of Time by Nightnoise. In my mind it bore the potential double curse. Not only did it have one of my favorite tunes of all time ("Fionnghuala," heard to best advantage on Old Hag You Have Killed Me by the Bothy Band), but this group was peopled by musicians whose work I had already grown to love in earlier incarnations. My favorite Micheal O'Domhnaill work had been done during his stint with the aforementioned Bothy Band, and on a remarkable collaboration with Kevin Burke (Promenade). Similarly, his sister Triona had been an important Celtic muse to me with her work not only as a Bothy, but earlier with Skara Brae and the delightful Touchstone. Johnny Cunningham, as one of the leading lights of Silly Wizard, had already established his formidible Celtic fiddle credentials with me. Yet here these folks are, huddled together in the ominously scary new age section of my local CD vendor's bins. What could be going on here?

I must report that the first several ... no, wait, honesty demands ... the first dozen or more listenings left me feeling as though my assessment that the whole could not equal the sum of its parts was right on the money. But you know, music can be a tricky critter, and this disc has slowly but steadily grown on me. Once I got flexible in my thinking, and tapped back into the Tim Weisberg neural pathways that had been dormant a decade or longer, this stuff was actually pretty darned good in places.

Favorite cuts include the opener, "One Little Nephew," "The March Air" (once it gets past a lethargic organ opening), the earnest and sincere title cut, and a classically elegant "Water Falls." Cunningham's "Night in That Land" is a quiet reflection, and flute player Brian Dunning (the balance of this quartet) offers the waltzlike "For You." Less successful is the arrangement of "Rose of Tralee," which wanders a bit too far afield of a traditional read for my tastes. The disc closes with "Three Little Nieces," with some piano figurings which evoke Randy Newman (or maybe Stephen Foster). All in all, a fine CD, and one which might well inspire you to investigate other Nightnoise offerings. (They've been recording since 1984, and have a new CD in production, as I understand.)

I still like the Bothy version of "Fionnghuala" better, though....

[ by Gilbert Head ]