Runrig Proterra(2003)[FLAC]

1 The Old Boys
2 Proterra
3 Days of Days
4 Empty Glens
5 Gabriel's Sword
6 From the North
7 An Toll Dubh
8 There's a Need
9 Faileas Air An Airigh
10 Heading to Acadia
11 All the Miles
12 A Reiteach
13 Angels From the Ashes

2003 Proterra CD Ridge RR021

http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/3510121df259e33b6a18413ac0884262/169859.jpg

Top twenty singles, Top Of The Pops appearances, Carlsberg ad music and sell-out tours have marked the career of this Scottish six-piece rock outfit, which for three decades has celebrated Alba's history with a fierce nationalistic pride. To help them define their current musical and cultural standpoint the band recruited Brazil-based Scottish musician Paul Mounsey, whose contemporary grooves on Proterra sharpen but ultimately fail to modernise Runrig's stadium-Celt-rock oevre, based on unquestionable sincerity and decent musicianship though it is.

As ever, vast keyboard swathes swill around with assorted strings and peripatetic skirly pipes while drums and percussion pound the relentless anthem beat with occasional borrowings from elsewhere. Thus are illustrated songs of legend, aspiration and regret whose lyrical structures echo the bardic forms of old but lack the sparkle of true Lit: sun-soaked seas, crystal-clear fountains and phrases like "...we rise/soul kites in a diamond sky" trip the cliché meter on a regular basis.

The Gaelic material has always been Runrig's strength - here, An Toll Dubh (The Dungeon) evokes a genuine thrill of Celtic otherworldliness but it's an all-too-brief respite in a sea of overstated reverberama for the lighter-waving masses. Angels From The Ashes, a soothing but unmemorable piano instrumental, winds up a 'project' album which will be bought in cartloads by the band's huge international fanbase and unregenerated prog-rock fans