Solas
Album: Shamrock City
Label: THL
Tracks: 16
Website: http://www.solasmusic.com

Irish American is not a genre of folk that I am particularly familiar with. Irish yes and American yes but not long standing influence of Irish American. When I saw this album I became immediately curious to see which of the two worlds would have the main influence.

The album heads off with a short introduction track which is sung in Gaelic and heads us straight into an absolutely beautiful track called 'Far Americay' which opens with an instrumental of guitar strumming and a fiddle before lovely vocals.

The band uses a mixture of guitars, banjos, fiddle and whistles to bring their varied sound throughout the album. Solas do a good of mixing their introductory instrument during their tracks as we see in 'Tell God and the Devil' and 'High, Wide, and Handsome' where the banjo and fiddle are in the forefront with really traditional American sounding folk tackling us and make dance and tap our feet along with the exciting tune.

Even with the exciting 'knees up' type tunes we do also get much softer and slower tunes such as 'Michael Conway' and 'Arbor Day' which just help relax again after the more exciting tunes.

We even get tunes such as the instrumental 'Girls on the Line' which starts off slow then gradually jumps into a much faster lively tune. 'Lay Your Money Down' is a much more American style song, but with Irish roots in the overall sound, and this idea seems to occur throughout the album.

This band merges Irish and American roots together very well, without neglecting either heritage in their musical sound, as with 'Labour Song' which has Irish vocals in the forefront of the tune. This is a fantastic band with a great album. Their music can offer a lot to any musical fans.

Paul Rawcliffe