What Men Deserve To Lose

For want of a better term, the Peatbog Faeries play modern ceilidh music, to get you up and dancing, but that's a simplification. The fiddle and the pipes are the heart of it all, but they're really at the center of a very complex web. Anything more than a cursory listen reveals the layers of sound here, from the programming under it all to the rhythm section, keyboards, brass, and then the lead instruments. Short of it becoming a great mess, there's probably no way to make a CD with all of that unless there's something of a gloss to it, which this certainly has -- "There's a Girl Behind the Bar Who Thinks She's Garbo" or "Still Drink in the Morning" are prime examples, starting off as if they were made for club dancefloors rather than anything to do with folk. But the result is that they combine ancient and modern in very effective proportions, and aren't afraid of heavy touches of electricity, like Tom Salter's raucous guitar work on "The Invergarry Blues." They've gradually conjured up their own space (although it would be nice to hear a bit more of the horns -- as it is, all too often they seem like punctuation and coloring) somewhere between Shooglenifty and Afro Celt Sound System. This is a good record, but probably nowhere near as powerful as it would sound live. ~ Chris Nickson|