You are hereAlbum Review: Breabach - Bann (Breabach Records)
Album Review: Breabach - Bann (Breabach Records)
The third album release by Scots quintet Breabach comes at the end of a year of success and change, with nominations at both the BBC2 Folk Awards and the Scots Trad Awards in the category of best band in both cases. With a personnel re-shuffle that introduces into the fold multi-instrumentalist Megan Henderson on fiddle and piper James Mackenzie on both pipes and flute, the latter maintaining the band's unique double bagpipe sound, Breabach keep their high standard of musicianship up, a standard that has already been captured on two previous releases, THE BIG SPREE (2007) and THE DESPERATE BATTLE OF THE BIRDS (2010).
Once again demonstrating a flair for both composition and arrangement, the band present eleven outstanding pieces either self-penned, borrowed from the tradition or borrowed from other significant writers. With the bagpipes up front once again on such as Gig Face, apparently the alter-ego of Calum MacCrimmon and Donald's Rant, which is probably the first time Jeannie Robertson and Dr Who have been coupled together in the history of folk music. There's also some beautifully rendered melodies, none more so than Duncan Chisholm's charming Farley Bridge.
It's not all instrumental pyrotechnics though, there's also some well-structured songs such as Calum MacCrimmon's autobiographical Western Skies, Ewan McPherson's musical treatment of Edwin Muir's poem Scotland 1941, renamed Scotland's Winter, with a shared vocal courtesy of Ewan Robertson and Megan Henderson, together with Megan's fine reading of Karine Polwart's Rivers Run. Effectively closing the album is the plaintive M'Eudail, M'Eudail, beautifully rendered in Gaelic, before tagging onto the end a radio edit of Scotland's Winter. All in all, a rich variety of sounds from a young band intent on making their mark on Scots music.
Allan Wilkinson
Northern Sky
