CD Review

Clandestine
To Anybody At All
Clandestine Records

Clandestine is a new traditional-sounding Celtic band out of Texas. They have good energy and solid musicianship, easily winning over the crowd when I saw them at Kerrville in May. The album is impressive too, with several original tunes and songs. Unlike Whirligig, Clandestine's medleys combine traditional and original sections, and they succeed in matching the pieces together. Jennifer Hamel's songwriting gives the group a unique voice as she layers traditional and original elements in a similar way. And the two female voices help layer the worlds of fantasy and reality that she works with. "Peggy" is a classic "girl-meets-rogue-and-runs-away" story, and Hamel both resets the traditional lyric and adds to it. "Babylon" is constructed from children's rhymes, giving it the feel of inspired nonsense. She manages to tell a story of a woman traveling to court her lover at night. The refrain, though, adds a haunting element; it's a long journey to a long-feared place:

How many miles to Babylon
- Three score and ten
Can I get there by candlelight?
- Yes, and back again

"Lonesome Heaven" displays unusually fine storytelling and the spark of real poetry. The motif of a woman traveling in a strange city alone at night and returning home by morning continues:

Sing a song for a quiet girl, a mild girl, with dark hair
Like a curtain, like a veil
On a train in a broad land, a stranger;
She has long hands in the gray light of rain.

It's not clear if the night trip is a dream, a vision, or something more substantial. But the ambivalence of leaving home for rogue lovers and far sprawling cities of lost souls seems appropriate for a Celtic band from Houston.

I wonder a little at the pretty production they've chosen for two labor ballads, Jody Stecher's "Miner's Lullabye" and Leon Rosselson's "A World Turned Upside Down," about the English Diggers uprising. In both narratives, the speaker's emotion rises to anger and indignation, making the songs protests instead of tragedies. The decision to sing them prettily doesn't make sense to me. But then, I think of Simon & Garfunkel's dainty version of "Pretty Peggy-O" - which I never understood either. All in all, a fine album. -HB