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Taplas
Irish Echo
The Irish American News
The Irish Times
Mojo
Living Tradition
Hot Press
Net Rhythms
Folkwax

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TAPLAS
The Welsh Folk Mag - Oct/Sept.06

TÉADA - Inné Amárach (Gael Linn)

Teada's third album sees the arrival of flute player Damien Stenson, as replacement for John Blake. He certainly makes his mark, playing with great drive, with some tight dueting with both fiddler, Oisin McDiarmada and box player Paul Finn, as well as some fine solo playing.

The band has a distinctive sound that is both modern in its blending of different dance rhythms, while yet, retaining strong echoes of the music of the past: the lovely old-style sound of Paul Finn's grey Paolo Soprani and Sean McElwain's banjo being strong contributors here.

In fact, the title means Yesterday and Tomorrow. There are no songs this time; they have decided to focus exclusively on imstrumentals, but there's no shortage of variety.

In addition to the CD.; there's a DVD on which the band discuss their music and arrangements as well as their interest in the music of North Connaught and play tunes in an informal setting.   Interviews with veteran Sligo musicians Sean Ryan, Verona Ryan and Peter Horan are also included.

Beautifully packaged and presented, this is certainly their most impressive recording to date. Nick Passmore

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IRISH ECHO

A Critic's Discipline and a Band's Touch

CEOL
By Earle Hitchner

In "On Writing Well," now in its 30th edition, William Zinsser is blunt: "Music critics have almost no power." Elsewhere in his book, he refers to music as "an art that we receive through our ears, yet writers are stuck with describing it in words we will see. At best they can only partly succeed."
Anyone familiar with the quip "writing about music is like dancing about architecture" will recognize some core truths in Zinsser's comments. How do you use stubborn, two-dimensional prose to describe adequately the multi-dimensional, gestalt experience of music?
As I tell my college students, music critics are doomed to fall short. The best we can hope for is capturing the flavor of a performance on stage or on a recording. Open minds and open ears are what critics should bring to music. Add in genre knowledge, technical insight, a heavy dose of impressionism, and historical research extending far beyond the single-sheet press release, and you have a competent music critic.
Maybe.
In the February 2003 issue of All About Jazz magazine, musician Ned Rothenberg wrote, "Critics are full of suggestions for how musicians can improve. Musicians counter: 'If you think it's so easy, let's see you get up here and play!'" He has a point, which we critics, safe in our concert or CD-listening seats, sometimes forget.
Unlike Zinsser, Rothenberg expresses sympathy for the challenge faced by critics. "Music is fulfilling but awfully difficult; writing about it is the same," he concedes.
The music critics I admire and have befriended over the years got into the discipline (and it IS a discipline) for one overriding reason: they were so inspired and catalyzed by music that they wanted to share their enthusiasm in print. Turning someone on to highly skilled or great music is a pleasure too seldom acknowledged by critics themselves. Most of us prefer to praise, not pan, and we all know that the toughest critique to write falls somewhere between the two. It's easy to become weaselly or wishy-washy when trying to write about music neither brilliant nor banal.
"Inne Amarach," translating as "Yesterday Tomorrow," is the new Teada album deserving and getting my very strong praise. It is the Sligo-based quintet's third studio recording and shows a tantalizing mix of maturity and daring that make it the band's best release to date.
It is also all instrumentals. On Teada's first two albums, "Teada" in 2002 and "Give Us a Penny and Let Us Be Gone" in 2004, founding member and 1999 All-Ireland senior fiddle champion Oisin Mac Diarmada sang two or three songs each. I found his singing thin, reedy, and otherwise lacking there and in concert, and indicated as much in my reviews.
Colleagues who browse chat rooms and niche sites on the Internet have e-mailed to me a few overseas reviews of "Inne Amarach" that lament the absence of Mac Diarmada's vocals. A few e-mailers speculated whether my "harsh" (their adjective, not mine) reviews of Mac Diarmada's singing convinced him to stop.
If so, that would make William Zinsser a poor judge of music critics. My hope is that no musicians take a critic's words, positive or negative, so deeply to heart that they would radically change what they want to perform.
A recent report about the breakup of Cape Breton Island's the Cottars quoted one of the members' parents: "Any future this band could have is not inducement enough to endure any more antagonism or stress." Did less than rosy reviews (mine included) of the group's music persuade them to dissolve? Were critics partially the cause of this "antagonism or stress"?
I trust Oisin Mac Diarmada, a fiddler of prodigious talent, opted for uncritical reasons not to sing on the new Teada album. I haven't changed my opinion of his vocal ability, but I also realize it's my opinion and not that of all critics. And my unweaselly critical opinions over the years have drawn their share of reader brickbats. They come with the job.
What also comes with the job, thankfully, is "Inne Amarach." Since 2001, the year they emerged through the Irish TV series "Flosc," Teada have steadily carved out their own distinctive place among trad bands, and this new recording represents a high-water mark for them.
The departure within the last two years of a guitarist, flutist, and pianist as gifted as John Blake is not readily overcome, but in Sligo flutist Damien Stenson, Blake's ostensible replacement, Teada have gained a formidable player. Monaghan guitarist and banjoist Sean McElwain ably adds guitar while Mac Diarmada continues to double on piano, so Blake's contributions are well covered.
Further tour seasoning for the present lineup has clearly led to greater confidence and clout in the studio. The opening medley of "Lady Montgomery/Follow Me Down/Give the Girl Her Fourpence/Tie the Bonnet" reels is fleet and fierce. Stenson's flute, Mac Diarmada's fiddle, McElwain's bouzouki, Laois native Paul Finn's button accordion, and Dubliner Tristan Rosenstock's bodhran trade off and rejoin with an abandonment stemming from tight arranging. It's an exhilarating start to the CD.
Teada array and play dance tunes with an imaginative flair and an ebullience reminiscent of De Dannan in its heyday.. "Jamesy Gannon's/McDermott's/Over the Moor to Peggy" is a medley of a march, barndance, and reel, and the style displayed in each and the segues effected between them are equally irresistible. This track epitomizes the album's title, conveying an echo of yesterday's musicality while pointing toward tomorrow's invention, and the twinning of Mac Diarmada's fiddle and Stenson's flute is especially breathtaking.
For stepped tempo and sheer diversity, it's hard to top the medley of Turlough O'Carolan's "Planxty Crilly," the polka "Micho Russell's," and the slide "Mickey Callaghan's." McElwain's guitar and Mac Diarmada's fiddle begin with a delicacy neither precious nor ethereal, and their shift into the polka seems natural, abetted by Mac Diarmada's deft, detail-rich fiddle embellishments and Stenson's lithe flute playing. Button accordion, flute, fiddle, guitar, and bodhran deliver the concluding slide in a way that's forceful without being forced.
Gradational pacing also pops up in "Ta Dha Ghabhairin Bhui Agam/The Shelf" polkas and is signaled by Stenson's jaunty flute work riding comfortably with Rosenstock's crisp bodhran playing. The entire ensemble delivers a powerful, rising rhythm that would make Kerry and Clare set dancers hit the hardwood in a hurry.
In the medley of "The Tenpenny Piece" slip jig and "Comb Your Hair and Curl It" and "Larry McDonagh's" hop jigs, Teada cunningly switch from fiddle and bodhran, to flute and bouzouki, and then to a fuller palette of button accordion with the other four instruments, plus Mac Diarmada's dubbed piano, to create tension and intrigue. Improvisation lies in the latticework of these tunes, where Mac Diarmada's fiddle ornamentation is so precise yet unobtrusive that it actually pulls the listener in.
"Nora Criona" is a descriptive piece performed at a slowed jig rhythm to better savor the melody and evoke more of the tune's emotional understructure. In less capable hands, this tune could have fallen into a navel-gazing exercise or languid solipsism, but Teada keep it aloft through their soulful interpretation.
McElwain's banjo graces such tracks as "Delia Keane's/The Horse Leotard/Sean Bui/The Dawn Chorus" jigs, "Sarah's Delight/Paddy Sean Nancy's/The Ireland We Knew/The Ewe Reel," and "Port Aitheantais Na gCaipini/Johnny's So Long at the Fair." The banjo is particularly prominent in that pairing of single jigs, where the instrumental blend achieves a kind of critical mass, expert and exciting.
Flute and guitar bracingly begin the medley of "Bonnie Ann/John Kelly's/The Boy in the Boat" reels, and those two instruments yield to fiddle and bodhran, then the addition of box and flute, to make an appropriately rousing band finish to the album.
The only track less than completely impressive on this CD is the hornpipes "Ebb Tide/Peter Wyper's." A slight pedestrianism creeps into the performance of these two tunes, in which the triplets are too spare and studied.
But that's a very minor speck on this masterwork from Teada, who have enhanced the release by packaging in a separate, half-hour DVD documentary disk. It covers their musical backgrounds, studio work, and Sligo terrain, influences, and favorite haunts, including Nathy Brennan's Pub in Tubbercurry, the Strandhill Bar in Strandhill, and Duddy's Pub in Ballymote.
Seeing and hearing flutist Peter Horan and fiddlers Paddy and Verona Ryan play together are a special treat on the DVD. So, too, are the comments from flutist Yumiko Tamara, who moved from Japan to Sligo so she could play Irish traditional music in sessions "seven days a week," and from a Teada member describing an unscheduled concert by the band in an Alabama church. The concert was in response to a traveling preacher's prophecy a week earlier that "when the Irish sound is in town, God will be near." No wonder the congregation stood and, hands held high, blessed Teada's divinely acquired talent.
Amen to that.
Vocal-less but instrumentally sumptuous, "Inne Amarach" is a splendid, frequently spellbinding CD-and-DVD release strengthening Teada's place within the top tier of Irish traditional bands today. This dancing-about-architecture critic gives it a rave.

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THE IRISH AMERICAN NEWS - 16th Oct.06

Téada: Inné Amárach

Téada has their brand new album out. Entitled, Inné Amárach (Yesterday, Tomorrow) it is all-instrumental, and a stunner. We came late to the Teada train. There is always a hot, new group out in trad that everyone is talking about, and that was Téada for a while. We think it actually may have hurt them, as the buzz trapped them. Time has moved a little down the road, and these five lads have truly matured and come into their own. The album is on Compass in the States, issued under license from the legendary, Gael Linn. Compass or Gael Linn has really put the money behind this package, as there is also a dvd included separately, featuring the band and many of the Sligo musicians and others from whom they have drawn inspiration. Finally, this band is living up to its buzz. This is a solid contender for Instrumental Album of the Year. Exciting trad, Téada continues their own tradition of including a tremendous variety of tempos and forms in the tunes. They are surely in a contemporary context---but still truly trad. As we say, we have become fans, and albums like this will keep us firmly in the Teada camp!  

Rating: 3.5 Harps Bill Margeson

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THE IRISH TIMES - July 14th 2006

CD OF THE WEEK

TÉADA - Inné Amárach (Gael Linn) ****

If music can be said to have an accent, then Téada's tongue is unashamedly coloured by the shadows of Ben Bulben. Sligo's subtle flute and fiddle inflections are at the heart of the band's sound, and on their third CD they've reached their majority, with a lateral-thinking repertoire that fearlessly collides and sensually shimmies, as the tunes dictate - in all the right places. Téada thrives on the wedding of unlikely bedfellows of tunes, so that tempo, pace and sheer verve are as unpredictable as a warm front in hurricane season. Their marriage of a march, barndance and reel on the set bookended by Jamesy Gannon's and Over the Moor to Peggy reflects an appetite for shaking it up, yet their disciplined playing and complex arrangements whisper of a comfort with both creative flair and academic precision. Oisín MacDiarmada's fiddle and Damien Stenson's flute flutter and hush alongside one another, each instrument tiptoeing in and out of the tunes with an unhurried agility. There's a drawing-room grandeur to their haughty arrangement of the Delia Keane jig set, with Charlie Lennon's The Dawn Chorus lending a pensive close to a superb piece of ensemble playing, with bodhrán, box and guitar stitched into the tunes' fabric with the precision of a Parisian coutourier. Accompanied by an informative (if at times a little po-faced) DVD, Inné Amárach is a snapshot of a band who revel in the unpredictable forces of the tradition, adding their own tincture of personality for deliciously good measure.

Siobhán Long

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MOJO - NOV.06
TÉADA - Inné Amárach (Gael Linn) ****

With Danu temporarily in hiding and the likes of Altan, Lunasa and Dervish approaching senior denizen status, Teada offer Irish traditional musk renewed zest and clarity. Nothing mindless in their tunes, either; they have a remarkably clean fluent sound, whipping up a frenzy without ever forcing the issue, and in Oisin MacDiarmada, they have a guy with the potential to become on of the fiddle greats.

Colin Irwin

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LIVING TRADITION

TÉADA - Inné Amárach
Gael-Linn CEFCD188
11 tracks, 46 minutes, plus a 26 minute DVD

This third album from Téada has completely changed my opinion of the band. I found their first album rather bland, and their second was a bit rough and ready, but Inné Amárach is a delight from start to finish. It won't blow your socks off, but it will open your mind and refresh your soul. Why? Because here is a quintet of brilliant young musicians who have decided to present Irish music as it really is: the joy of it, the full breadth and depth of it, and sometimes (but not always) the power and pace of it.

Yes, there are reels here: it's mainly Sligo dance music, so there would have to be reels. But when was the last time a Sligo album included marches, slip-jigs, barn dances, polkas, slides, planxties, and even a rare descriptive piece? In many ways this CD takes us back to the heyday of ceili band recordings, before Planxty and The Bothy Band changed perceptions of Irish music. The medley of Jamesy Gannon's, McDermott's and Over the Moor to Peggy strings together a march, a barn dance and a reel: you'd swear you were listening to an exquisitely restored recording of the old Glenside or Castle band at their best. New recruit Damien Stenson does an equally splendid job on The Shelf, a driving polka learnt from Harry Bradley and played as a rousing flute and bodhrán duet here. Even the reels are exceptional: Sarah's Delight, Paddy Sean Nancy's, The Ireland We Knew, and The Ewe Reel are all a little out of the ordinary but their provenance is second to none: Paddy O'Brien, Johnny Henry, Ed Reavy and Packie Dolan respectively. Téada show enormous respect for the music of their forebears, and this comes through in their inspired choice of material and their success in recreating the sounds of a former era.

The inclusion of the complex descriptive piece Nóra Críona is a rarity indeed. I don't remember a band doing this since The Chieftains recorded Bonaparte's Retreat, but it works beautifully here and adds a special grace and depth to the album. Contrast that with the light and easy touch on the single jigs Port Aitheantais na gCaipíní and Johnny's So Long at the Fair, a real kitchen session feel with barely a hint of accompaniment behind the melody. Then the full band sound returns for the final track, three big reels on overdrive: Bonnie Ann, John Kelly's and The Boy in the Boat ending a glorious album. With full and informative sleeve notes, and a bonus half-hour DVD featuring more tunes and talk from the likes of Peter Horan and Paddy Ryan, Inné Amárach is a marvellous tribute to musicians of the past and a veritable beacon for Irish music of the future. One of this year's highlights.

Alex Monaghan

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HOT PRESS - July 13th 2006

Téada- Inné Amárach

by - Sarah Mc Quaid

Like its predessors, Téada's third album offers a commendable blend of solid musicianship, traditional grounding and concern for varying the arrangements.
Take one track for example, a lively set of polkas: Sean Mc Elwain starts off with a deft, unhurried rendition of the melody on guitar; fiddler Oisin Mac Diarmada and accordionist Paul Finn join in; the Damien Stenson and Tristan Rosenstock take over with a brisk flute - and - bodhran duet on the second tune in the set before being rejoined by each of the others in turn, with Mac Diarmada now on piano. It's a pity, though, that this album is purely instrumental. Mac Diarmada contributed three fine songs in Irish to their previous CD, 2003's La an Dreoilin, and this listener for one had been looking forward to more. A bonus DVD features a 25 minute documentary


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NET RHYTHMS

UK music website www.netrhythms.com

Inné Amárach (Yesterday And Tomorrow) is the third album from this talented young Irish traditional band, and builds well on the success of 2004's Lá An Dreoilín. Benefitting from members drawn from diverse backgrounds, Téada easily retain their original freshness, strongly displaying the typical Sligo penchant for deriving a great lift from their concentration on, and clear definition of, the rhythm of the tunes and delighting in the gentle ornamentation of the melodies. And when they're firing on all cylinders they're still absolutely superb - as the opening set of reels and the spirited pair of hornpipes (track 7) unarguably demonstrate. Téada don't have to play hard and fast to make an impact though, and their unhurried, relaxed approach almost always pays considerable dividends for the listener while you can invariably tell the musicians themselves are having a ball
too).

Since their second album Téada have undergone a further lineup change, whereby Sligo man Damien tenson has replaced John Blake on flute (and as a consequence Seán McElwain now moves across to play guitar as well as banjo and bouzouki). One other minor change is that the new album is wholly instrumental, so we're denied any chance of hearing Oisín Mac Diarmada's fine singing voice, which is a shame. I suppose there are times when the flute is possibly marginally more prominent in the band texture than I'd noticed hitherto, but that's not a bad thing when the total recording balance is so well managed and the band's sense of internal dynamics so unerring and beguiling; for Téada have a canny, truly democratic way of expressing the music's subtleties. I specially liked the blend Téada achieve on the set of jigs (track 6), maintaining constant interest in the exchanges between instruments among and within the melodic lines. While the carefree mood of the playing on the set of jigs (track 10) is infectious, leading well onto the final track, a storming set of reels. The sections of comparative repose, such as the delectable introductory planxty to track 9's polkas (this being a little-known O'Carolan composition), are enchantingly managed too; and Paul Finn's button-accordion contributions are vibrant as ever. Happily, the moments which don't quite convince me are very few, and
mostly comprise the times when Oisín moves across to the piano in order to thicken the texture but it cloys a bit I find on the track 2 jigs and the closing part of the track 4 polka set. And the use of what sounds like a tambura-drone that introduces the "descriptive piece" Nóra Críona is a slightly curious touch.

As for the choice of material, this goes even further than album number two in the direction of lesser-known tunes, with a few particularly delightful selections towards the middle of the disc being acknowledged in the notes as coming from recordings of John Kelly. Others come from the repertoires of Kildare fiddler Muintir Uí Chatháin, Séamus Ennis, Michael Coleman and Clare whistler Micho Russell, so there's no overt bias towards Sligo-sourced tunes here! Téada prove equally persuasive whatever regional sources they adopt for their tune-sets, and with their acute propensity for spotlighting different varieties of tune alongside the usual session fare have once again produced a thoroughly engaging CD. And a good extra sales gambit is the bonus DVD which takes the form of a 25-minute documentary exploring Téada's fascination with the interaction of past and present through one of their key influences, the rich musical culture of the Sligo region; it has some musical material in common with the CD, but it's largely a worthwhile exercise giving much of the desired flavour and a decent feel of the session craic as well as the studio, helped along by brief interviews with native Sligo musicians and some archive material. This new package persuasively shows that in their own way, Téada are up there near the top of the tree alongside other young outfits such as Danú.

David Kidman August 2

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FOLKWAX
the largest weekly Folk publication in the world

Téada
Inné Amárach

FolkWax Rating: 10 out of 10

Cooking Up Irish Connections Between Yesterday and Tomorrow

There's something about the handing on of tunes and making them new that's a bit like cooking. You take an old familiar flavor and add a bit here, take away something there, make more healthy, add some spice -- and while it is recognizably related to the first idea, it is also something new. If you're lucky and talented you may have created a signature dish or a distinctive taste that's all your own. So it is with the men of Teada. They've been working together on this blend of tradition that connects with the modern day for several years now. While their earlier records showed a new talent and a band to watch, Inne Amarach (which means "yesterday/tomorrow" in Irish) delivers on that promise.

Oisin Mac Diarmada on fiddle; Paul Finn on button accordion; Tristan Rosenstock on bodhran; Sean McElwain on guitar, bouzouki, and banjo; and, Damien Stenson on flute, create, to continue the culinary metaphor, a dish whose distinctive flavors and spices both blend and stand forth clearly. All in the service of some very fine pieces of music re-imagined and interpreted to a very high standard.

Coming from different points of the Irish compass --Sligo, Laois, Monaghan, and Dublin - each player brings a uniquely tuned ear to the process. There's not a bit of need of knowledge or to make any cooking comparisons to enjoy the music, however. Its stands just find on its own as lively, engaging, storytelling music.

This is indeed storytelling, even though not a word is sung or spoken through the eleven sets. Reels, jigs, slips jigs, marches, polkas, hornpipes, and a bit of descriptive music set over, possibly, from the work of pipers, comprise the styles covered. Outstanding sets include the hornpipes on "The Ebb Tide/Peter Wyper's" and the slip jog/hop jig set starting off with "The Tenpenny Piece."

Mac Diarmada provides incisive liner notes in both English and Irish. There is a short DVD included with the package, which gives a bit of the band's playing style, a hint of the landscapes which form the background for it, and a word or two from those who listen on why the music connects.

Kerry Dexter is a senior contributing editor at FolkWax

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