Though I don’t listen to it as much as I’d like to, I love Irish
\nand Celtic music. The folkiness of the melodies, the lightness of
\nthe songs (even if the lyrics are singing about something dark),
\nthe calm-to-frantic strumming of the mandolins and bowing of the
\nfiddles – what’s not to love about it?<\/p>\n
Lief Sorbye and Michael Mullen, two-fifths of the band Tempest,
\nbranched out to record as Caliban, promoting a music that is not as
\nmuch Irish as it is Celtic. (Funny to note that neither member is
\nfrom the auld sod; Sorbye is from Norway, and Mullen is from…
\nFresno. Go figure.) Their self-titled debut features some music
\nthat makes you want to get up and dance a drunken jig, but it also
\nmakes you long for the backing of a full band.<\/p>\n
Make no mistake, Sorbye and Mullen are incredibly capable
\nmusicians. Sorbye switches off on octave-mandolin, mandolin,
\nbodhran and (though I admit I couldn’t hear it) harmonica, and both
\nmen are very good singers. But when you hear Robert Barry lend his
\ntalents on bass and keyboards, you almost wish that Caliban’s sound
\nwas a bit fuller. Octave-mandolin and fiddle are fine, but I do
\nmiss a touch of drums and tin whistle – then again, this is all a
\nmatter of taste, and doesn’t distract from the music itself.<\/p>\n
Both Sorbye and Mullen also show their songwriting talents,
\nthough they stick to composing music to traditional lyric sets –
\nnot that this is a bad thing, mind you. I have yet to hear a
\nvariation on the “John Barleycorn” theme that I haven’t liked, and
\n“Bold John Barleycorn” is as good as any I’ve heard. Ironically,
\nthe instrumentals are often the most powerful selections on
\nCaliban<\/i>; the four-reel “Tipsy Sailor” starts off slowly, but
\nworks itself into a glorious frenzy – you can almost see the
\nsubject in question go from slowly staggering away from a bar to
\nending up dancing madly in the middle of the saloon.<\/p>\n
This is not to say that the songs with vocals are weak – though
\none wonders what possessed Caliban to select a Richard Thompson
\nsong (“Beeswing”) to cover. “What Put The Blood?” is done well a
\ncapella, while “The Journeyman” is an interesting and charming
\nselection. The highlight is a Norweigan folk song, “Jeg Lagde Meg
\nS\u00e5 Silde,” which I would have assumed was in Gaelic had I not
\nread the liner notes.<\/p>\n
So with all the words of praise for
\nCaliban<\/i>, could there be any negative points? In one sense, I
\ndo wish that this disc had been a little more – how can I word it?
\n–
\nhard-core<\/i> Celtic. Despite the reliance on traditional songs
\nand instruments, there still is a sense of laid-back California
\nstyle to this disc that doesn’t always feel natural. Maybe fleshing
\nout the sound a bit with other instruments would have helped this,
\nI don’t know. Besides that, it occasionally is easy to lose your
\nfocus when you’re listening to this disc – it almost beckons you to
\nallow it to play in the background. I’m not sure I like that; I
\nprefer to have what I listen to up front requiring at least partial
\nconcentration. Maybe it’s that
\nCaliban<\/i> is hypnotic in a sense.<\/p>\n
By no means is
\nCaliban<\/i> a bad disc; for fans of Celtic music, this will
\nprovide great enjoyment, and I believe that Sorbye and Mullen will
\nonly continue to get better at their craft. But is it wrong to
\nsuggest that this album could have been a little more Celtic?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27370,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[7284],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-38735","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-caliban","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38735\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38735"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=38735"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=38735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}