Featuring special guests Kate Rusby, John McCusker, Boo Hewerdine, Ian Carr, Phil Cunningham, and more!
Highly anticipated, Eddi Reader’s Sings the Songs of Robert Burns is a luscious, captivating intersection, bringing together some of the UK’s finest folk musicians with members of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra to perform the songs of the great Scottish poet Robert Burns. Produced by longtime Reader collaborator, songwriter, and guitarist Boo Hewerdine, the album masterfully melds earthy folk arrangements with haunting, ethereal orchestral overtones.
Recorded immediately after debuting the material at a sold-out concert at Glasgow’s Celtic Connections Festival, Sings the Songs of Robert Burns captures all the excitement and power of that fabled night with a rich, pristine studio sound. Featured participants include a who’s-who of British Isles folk music, including Phil Cunningham, John McCusker, Ewen Vernal, Christine Hanson and Ian Carr.
Review:
Eddi Reader has proven her worth as a sublime singer of pop and folk
material (and beyond), but this returns her full-bore to her Scottish roots.
Born from the concerts she did at the 2002 Celtic Connections festival, it's a
decidedly lush performance that hauls in several well-known Celtic names like
Phil Cunningham, John McCusker, and Ian Carr to help her along. But
it's Reader's rendition of Robert Burns' classics that's the key here. She
picked familiar material, songs that have become part of the folk continuum that
can be both a blessing and a curse. But she reinvents something like “My Love
Is Like a Red Red Rose,” investing it with rich emotion. She positively flies
on the more romantic songs, such as “Ae Fond Kiss,” but she brings a
surprising depth to “Charlie Is My Darling” and the chestnut “Auld Lang
Syne,” and “Ye Jacobites” sizzles with tension. The arrangements go for
the cinematic rather than the intimate, putting them on the dangerous edge of
new age. But such is the quality of everyone involved that there's no danger of
teetering over and it becomes a tour de force. It is one of the highlights of
Reader's splendid career, and even “Wild Mountainside,” decidedly not a
Burns song, fits in perfectly.
All Music Guide – Chris Nickson