Song Road – Once upon a time, there was a singing Canadian storyteller…
Much like country music queen Dolly Parton, Teresa Doyle likes singing story songs. And is darned good at it. The stories here are drawn mostly from her native Canada and its Celtic traditions, celebrated on a couple of traditional numbers, ‘A Chuachag Nam Beann’ (a waulking song from the Outer Hebrides) and ‘Caoineath Mhuire’ (an Irish keening song). The latter effectively showcases the creativity and imagination of both Doyle and Jaron Freeman-Fox, who accompanies her on fiddle here and who arranged the entire album. The upper portion of Doyle’s vocal range shines brightly, and her breath control is admirable. The clarity of Doyle’s delivery and the catchiness of her melodies and lyrics may find you singing along on her ‘Gone Down River’, a tale of the Yukon, while ‘Maggie Lachlin’s Last Storm’ portrays, using a narrative structure evocative of fellow Canadian Leonard Cohen, a female shaman from Prince Edward Island, where Doyle resides. Her wider interests and wanderings provide story material on ‘Lazy Holiday’, about a sojourn to Cuba, and on ‘Un Destino Nuevo’, inspired by Mexican activists in Joan Baez-like fashion. There’s even an East Indian chant, ‘Loka Samasta’, with clarinet. Freeman-Fox proves himself a competent multiinstrumentalist and an evocative arranger who’s not a roots purist and yet manages to allow traditional regional elements to shine through the contemporary gloss.
Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars
— Jeff Kaliss, Songlines (Jan/Feb 2015)
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