Welcome to the Hotel Connemara

by

Dé Dannan

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De Dannan (formerly De Danann) has been one of the big names in Irish music for many years. And the concept of an album titled Welcome to the Hotel Connemara has some amazingly quirky possibilities -- just imagine some of rock 'n' roll's timeless classics redone in a blazing Irish style. An album like that could surely convince any remaining doubters that Celtic music packs a mean punch with boundless energy.

Unfortunately, this isn't that album. Although there are a fair number of rock classics to be found on this all-instrumental recording -- including "Lay Down Sally," "Love Hurts," "You've Lost That Loving Feeling," "Take It to the Limit," "When a Man Loves a Woman," "Hey Jude," "A Whiter Shade of Pale," "Eleanor Rigby," "Only the Lonely" and "Bohemian Rhapsody" -- they lack any semblance of a punch.

Some of the arrangements (particularly "Bohemian Rhapsody") are clever, and the execution by several De Dannan musicians and their guests is at times lovely. But the result is still an album of what sounds suspiciously like Irish Muzak, a tepid collection of tunes well-suited to fill the silence on Irish elevators and in Irish doctor's offices and shopping malls. "Eleanor Rigby" is the best on the album, and that's a retread from an earlier De Dannan recording.