Review Text
[Our first review from anyone important enough to quote]: Hiya, Dave -- I've been listening to and enjoying your CD -- nice sound too! I don't know if what I say here represents the kind of reaction you want people to have, but here it is anyway, all the best, Dáithí Sproule. 'From my perspective the areas of music that you might describe as 'eclectic' or 'folk- or trad-rock' (I can't find any valid use for the term 'Celtic rock'!) are a mine-field rarely negotiated successfully -- I suspect it's something you can't learn but a knack and a taste you must be born with. Róisín Dubh pull it off here with style and apparent ease -- a great selection of music from the Irish, Scottish and American traditions, recorded warmly and played with heart, taste and a great sense of fun. Enjoy!.' The band is Bill Malchow, vocals, David Rhees, backup vocals, guitar, fiddle, mando, Jason Novak, cittern and backup vocals, Mike Hogan, bohdran, whistles and backup vocals, and Royce Lerwick, bass guitar, uilleann pipes, whistles and backup vocals. We come from weird and wild musical and professional backgrounds and the only thing we have in common is when we get together it all works musically for some reason. We stick to a core of authentic folk styling, whether Scottish, Irish, American or British of origins, and then see what we can do with it to put a special bit of performance art into it that's never been tried before. We don't try to preserve traditional music so much as improve upon it--without going 'round the bend entirely forgetting where it came from. Except for some groovy rhythms of course, we have a strict 'no jazz' rule. Blues, well, that's folk music and oddly enough it has a lot in common with the celtic musical scale and stylings. We have also deliberately shunned the ever-so-popular celtic punk/rockabilly 'boom-chuck' double-time beat just to prove you can do without it. But if the right mood hit us we might even go there sometime. Not so far however. We hearken back more to the golden era of emerging British Isles influenced folk-rock of the late sixties and seventies, back before the Pogues essentially captured the whole name, title, and movement and bent it into something very fast and loud, crowded and urban. Nothing wrong with that of course, but it's been done and we certainly couldn't do it any better than the Pogues. We're just trying to get back to the roots of UK and US folk rock. And we do a very passable White Rabbit.
