One Man In The Middle brings you regular, unbiased and honest reviews of music albums and EPs from Christian artists and musicians in the UK and worldwide. Here we have Celtic Psalms by Kiran Young Wimberly & The McGraths with an overall review score of 8.1 out of 10.
Album Information:
Twelve authentic, traditional Irish and Scottish airs and melodies set to a selection of psalms. Ancient words and traditional music, feat. Kiran Young Wimberly and The McGraths, combine to help lead you into the presence of God.
Review:
I know there are people that absolutely love celtic music and they identify with the tune and the well-known words of many of the traditional songs, sadly this is not me. So I will freely admit that I don’t have a great grounding in this area, but I also don’t have a prior association with the tunes and most of them hold no personal meaning or memory for me. I am saying this because I have read other reviews of this album which point out that some of the tracks feel slightly inappropriate with the mix of music and lyrics that are presented.
One thing that is absolutely for certain, the album is filled with some great talented musicians and vocalists which really bring these tracks to life. It is nice to change to something that is 100% acoustic and there is certainly beauty in the blend of instruments here. They are pretty much all traditional instruments like flute, harp, fiddle and cello undergirding many of the tracks.
The words of all the songs are familiar Psalms and you can tell from the track listing above the Psalms that have been chosen for directly setting to music or at least have strongly been inspired by the original text. The tunes themselves will be familiar to many (although not me!) and include a mixture of Irish and Scottish traditions. Some of the choices are surprising, possibly none more so than “My God, My God (Psalm 22)” which is a lament in the Biblical reading and very familiar to Christians as the words spoken by Christ on the cross, all set to “Paddy’s Green Shamrock Shore”. This is quite a lively tune for this style, but the idea is to drive towards the hope at the end of the Psalm. This is a fairly well-known Irish air, but there are a few lesser-known tunes too, such as the version of the recently rediscovered “Thugamar Fein An Samhrad Linn”, which plays host to Psalm 104 “Praise The Lord All The Earth”.
Other than the criticisms that come from other more well-versed reviewers I don’t see what is not to like about this album. It is beautiful music that themselves have a long traditional connection with the Celtic countries with the words straight from scripture. All of this wrapped up with some excellent vocal harmonies and some amazing music work. The mix is clear and pure with every syllable clearly heard throughout. If you are looking for something for a time of reflection then this would be ideally suited to let this worship flood over you. It’s something fairly traditional, but nicely different and may make you dig out some of your old Iona CDs.
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