★ ★ ★ ★ ☆
The Dubliners member and growly singer of "Seven Drunken Nights" is ready to sing some traditionals. Not someone at a party you'd ask to sing because he's such a beautiful singer — his impressive voice is like gravel being crushed — but you'd ask him because he knows and can deliver a lot of great songs. He doesn't sing so much as chant or recite these tunes; "Black Velvet band," normally jaunty, is turned into something a bit more grim and gritty just by the delivery. In fact, he actually recites one track, a poem about Dublin called "Clearing a Space." I think for most people this would be rated rather poorly, but to me it evokes my childhood and another world. Favorite tracks: "The Humour Is On Me Now;" "Limerick Rake;" "The Dunes," apparently written by Shane McGowan, a haunting song about the piles of dead buried from the famine; "The Dingle Puck Goat."
