by Phil Hall

Artist: Moloney, O'Connell & Keane
Album: Kilkelly
Year produced: 1988

The main reason to seek out this recording from the short-lived trio of Mick Moloney, Robbie O'Connell and Jimmy Keane is the title song. Written by Peter Jones, it follows a series of letters from a father in Eire and his son in America. The father's struggle to survive in the midst of famine and poverty are truly heartbreaking, and the distance (both geographic and emotional) between parent and child results in a shattering climax. This is easily one of the most compelling compositions in modern Celtic music, and it is impossible not to come away from it without sore tear ducts.

Beyond "Kilkelly," however, is a fairly strange and often lopsided recording. Another song, "Peter Pan and Me," details the loss of innocence during the seemingly endless troubles, but unlike "Kilkelly" it comes across as trite and mechanical rather. Two straightforward instrumentals, combining reels and jigs, are okay but not particularly memorable.

But then there is the epic offering called "The Green Fields of America." Billed as an "operetta," this lengthy but excessively weird piece attempts to trace the experience of the Irish in America through various reels, dances, jigs, folk songs and ditties. It is not so much an operetta as it is a musical Mulligan's stew tossing in bits and pieces of "The Sailor's Hornpipe," "No Irish Need Apply," "The Night That Paddy Murphy Died" and even "The Notre Dame Fight Song" plus the Bing Crosby novelty tune "Two Shillelagh O'Sullivan." It is a mess, to be certain, and often it seems as if the Irish-American odyssey was a mix of treacly melodrama and bad vaudeville.

Moloney, O'Connell & Keane only recorded another album before disbanding. It would seem the brilliance of "Kilkelly" was something of a fluke, albeit an extraordinary fluke.

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Celtic MP3s Music Magazine writer, Phil Hall is contributing editor for Film Threat, book editor for the New York Resident, author of "The Encyclopedia of Underground Movies" (MWP Books) and a proud child of Wales.

Labels: cd_review_2005

Posted by Marc Gunn, Monday, May 09, 2005.
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