Celtic Woman - Celtic Woman

It’s Riverdance, but for your ears, with all the positive and negative baggage that implies. The American producer of Riverdance is the producer on this. The production implies more Enya than it does Altan (or even Clannad), and their cover of Orinoco Flow is inferior to the original. The five mononymous singers on this record are much more adept in crossing between classical, traditional, and popular styles than the poor teenage soprano on the last record I reviewed. The songs do run together, but they are fine background music. There’s rather little in the way of vocal harmonies or interplay between the leads, but there’s some unisons and some backup male singers here and there. The posterized soft-focus backgrounds and the white serif text looks very 2005. The front cover is straight-up bad.

Generally speaking, if a song on this record has a 5-string bass and gospel pretensions on it, I’m not a fan, and if it doesn’t, I enjoy it but I’m still not a “fan”. This group got its reputation in North America from a one-off PBS special, after which the group intended to break up. They are an acclaimed live act, but their live energy is smothered in the isolated studio. According to the sticker on the front, this cost €19.95. The average EUR to USD conversion in 2005 was 4 to 5, so this cost $24.94. That’s 40.31 in 2024 dollars. I’d much rather have a full tank of gas than this record. I got it for free, so I can’t really complain, but that’s an awful value for an album where the only two great songs are the two live bonus tracks.

Celtic Woman by Celtic Woman is a bad album, and I don’t like it.