The rough guide to Celtic women

"The choice of artists is restricted to singers: even the Susana Seivane track has her singing rather than highlighting her splendid piping, while Sharon Shannon's features some alt country vocals from Carol Keogh rather than her inimitable box playing. And there's a bit of a problem: each track is decent and stands perfectly well on its own, but despite the potential of the stellar cast there's a similar overall feel to most of the arrangements, so the album as a whole ends up sounding a bit one-dimensional ... Surely a missed opportunity when compared to the variety of (say) the excellent recent Rough Guide To English Folk. The series' usual decent sleevenotes and packaging come complete with a bonus CD: Canadian "vocal explorer" Teresa Doyle's 2004 album of ancient spiritual Gaelic songs Orrachan, which strays decidedly more towards the ethereal/meditative Enya-reena stereotype".