Greenwood Side

On "Greenwood Side," Lothlorien, a Celtic trio from New Zealand, brings us a lovely debut album, with a nice mixture of traditional and original tunes. "Ghostwood" is a lively and lilting instrumental, an original jig featuring Lothlorien's characteristic whistles, and a crisp bit of hand-clapping percussion. "Dans en Dro" is a pleasing arrangement of a traditional Breton dance tune — its rhythms offering a nice variation from the jigs and airs also included. "Schottische Fran Havero" is another traditional tune; however, a particularly nice thing about Lothlorien is, they tend to choose different traditional tunes than some of ones that are so well beloved they get done to death (like "Star of County Down" has been, by so many other groups). This has the advantage of giving even Lothlorien's traditional performances an added sense of freshness, and indeed, they do a fine job on this schottische. You easily envision people in colorful garb stepping gracefully through the patterns woven by this tune. "A-Souling" has an enjoyable bit of a cappella work and harmony to start, with the instrumentals blending in subtly as the verses go along. "An Cat Dubh" is an eerie instrumental air performed on low whistle, and is an original composition by group member Nicole Leonard. One caveat — Lothlorien does something that several modern Celtic groups do that's irksome to traditionalists: They have female vocalists singing male lyrics when they have a male group member with a pleasant voice who could more realistically perform the song, as on their version of "Foggy Banks," a saga about the rigors of fishermen's lives. Despite how lovely their version is, it does not carry an accurate emotional intensity because the women's voices are too light for the style of the song. It would have been better, some would say, to let the man sing lead on this one, instead of just harmony on choruses. Still, casual listeners will find this a pleasing arrangement, even so. In all, Greenwood Side is an excellent collection — good variety, skillful performances, and some talented original compositions. Those who are fond of Celtic music are likely to find themselves converting from casual listeners to Lothlorien fans after hearing their performances. Certainly this CD leaves us hoping for a follow-up release from this very versatile and gifted trio.