Celtus
Album: Moonchild/Portrait
Label: Talking Elephant
Tracks: 23
Website: http://www.talkingelephant.co.uk

Those readers with any leanings towards Celtic folk-rock will no doubt recall Celtus, the band which was born out of heavy-rock outfit Mama's Boys. Celtus was formed by the McManus brothers (John and Pat), who had taken a break from music when Mama's Boys split following the death of their brother Tommy.

With Celtus, it might be said that the brothers returned to their roots, for they drew much of their inspiration from the legendary Horslips, who had in many ways provided the blueprint for atmospheric Celtic folk-rock back in the early 70s. But things had moved on in the musical world, and while the brothers' answer was to recruit keyboardist Jonathan Czerwick the music they produced was to my mind altogether less satisfying, certainly less groundbreaking and rather more inclined towards mainstream stadium-ambient than folk-rock as we know it. As often recalling the mistier adventures of early Clannad as the arty manœuvres of Horslips, Celtus to my mind only really scored when they focused on the mystical (on tracks like Beyond The Dark, The Pilgrim and the instrumentals Trikuti and Brother's Lament), and best of all when they brought this aspect into the present-day (as on Rosa-Ree).

This new Talking Elephant two-disc package brings together the band's first two albums in their entirety. Moonchild and Portrait were both released on Sony, back in 1997 and 1999 respectively, and are very much of their time. Appealing enough in their own way, but to my mind ultimately too lightweight for rock and too mainstream for folk (those ubiquitous keyboards don't help matters either!), while lacking the pretensions (good or bad) of pomp or prog. Moonchild contains some credible music, but Portrait in particular leans even more than Moonchild towards standard, bland AOR and only with the more ambitiously scored closing opus Cathedral reaches any heights, this all in spite of the musicians' undoubted skills both instrumentally and vocally.

But this globally accessible kind of halfway-house music has its admirers, and Talking Elephant have done them a service by restoring these albums to the catalogue now. And well presented too, with original liner notes, full lyrics and two bonus tracks (the final version of instrumental The Awakening is of course included on disc two, on Portrait itself).

David Kidman