Review - Emerald Frequency - Enchanted Grove
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Artist: Emerald Frequency
CD: Enchanted Grove
Bonnie declares: Do you like to dance barefoot under ancient trees with the faeries by the light of a full moon? Or maybe you prefer to lightheartedly skip through a meadow in the sunshine with flowers in your hair? Perhaps you just love Celtic music, especially with a new agey twist. If any of the above applies to you, then Emerald Frequency has got an album for all your dancing and listening needs - Enchanted Grove.
Emerald Frequency is a father and daughter collaboration. Starlie and William utilize many different instruments, including guitar, bodhran, fiddle, djembe, pennywhistle, and harmonica. They also have serious voices. (One of my few complaints about Enchanted Grove is that they are so great when they harmonize that I wish there was more of it.)
All Turns wins best song from the CD hands down in my opinion. It’s a little spooky, a little new age, and completely enthralling. Starlie’s vocals are … wow. I don’t even have words. The background music is lovely but I almost wanted it to be a capella so that nothing would distract me from her singing. If you are a Loreena McKennitt fan, this song will flip your pancakes.
Earth Bairn is a fast paced tune that will have you tapping along. The lyrics are pointed and the message gets across while remaining, you know, lyrical. Starlie and William singing together makes me very happy. The drumming makes me ecstatic, particularly the interlude with the pennywhistle. That coughing/breathy/whuffing noise, now that I could do without. Sorry.
If there is a song that doesn’t resonate with me it has to be Girl Among The Wild Horses. Maybe I missed the point, I don’t know. It left me feeling vaguely confused and further listening did nothing to clear the fog. The delivery is melodramatic and seems out of character with the rest of the album.
Pois and Girls also contains the peculiar whuffing noise that is present in Earth Bairn, but in Pois and Girls it sounds downright dirty, dudes. Oops, alliteration got the best of me. I’m a bad person, but I’d be dead embarrassed to make that sound in front of my dad, and that’s all I’m saying.
Enchanted Grove is a polished and thoughtfully produced CD that contains brilliant songs. When I’m listening to Starlie sing I love her voice the most, but when I hear William I waver. I’m fickle that way. Vocals and instruments are skillfully combined throughout the album to create songs that are equally at home on your mp3 player or at an elvish woodland revel. Okay, I don’t *actually* know any elves, but if I did, I bet they’d recommend that you check this one out.
Mike proclaims: Mike has a confession to make. When we received Enchanted Grove by Emerald Frequency, I hate to admit it, but I underestimated them without even a listen. I poked around their Myspace page for a moment without really doing any reading, and my first impression was that what we were dealing with was a couple of hippie throwbacks who were going to inundate us with airy, pseudo-celtic modern-day druid tinkly stuff, and was really set to not care for the disc at all. I know, sometimes I’m a judgmental ass. I run a website where I give my opinion of other people’s artistic creations. What do you really expect? Sometimes being judgmental works out for me, and one of the best things is the amazing surprises you can get when you’re wrong.
Don’t get the wrong impression. I’m still certain that Starlie and William have more than a little of that new-age spiritualism going on. Don’t worry, you’ll get past it. I did, in startlingly quick fashion, because the music is just awe-inspring. Emerald Frequency brings together all manner of influence, and combines them into something completely new, without straying too far from their roots. Does that make sense? Probably not. I wrote it just now and it doesn’t make sense to me, either. The thing is, there’s so much going on here that it becomes hard to define. Some things are absolute, though. These are two musicians who have strong voices, and intense abilities with a variety of instruments.
The first couple of songs are kind of slow, but when you hit the Sweet Chomeraghs/Star of the County Down medley, everything takes off. The guitar on this track blew me away. I fell head over heels in love with Emerald Frequency at that moment, and from there on, it’s hard to say that I really didn’t like anything I heard. The title track, Enchanted Grove, features more amazing music, and the rhythmic pulse of the bodhran on Earth Bairn makes it impossible to not want to get up and dance. True Religion ranks up high as one of my favorites as well. It’s got soul, if ya know what I’m saying.
I think my favorite thing about Enchanted Grove is that it genuinely draws from a ton of styles and rather than just copying them, uses them and melds them. I’ve already said that once, so the fact that I’m using more space to say it again must mean I really believe it. If you like folk music, it’s hard to go wrong with this CD, and I’ll bet you ten to one they would be a lot of fun to see live.
If you want to dig a little deeper into Emerald Frequency, you can check out their website at www.emeraldfrequency.com or hit their Myspace page.
Any nasty comments about what a judgmental ass Mike is can be directed to bonnie (at) celtophilia (dot) com
