Album Review
Highland Farewell
Steve McDonald
Etherean Music
[They are sitting together in the lounge room. Joseito Fernandez presses Play and begins reading the back of the CD cover while the music starts.]
Joseito Fernandez: "Explores the soul-touching history of the demise of of the Highland Clans."
Compay Segundo: Ha, I didn't know that they were dead! What happened to them?
Joseito: Disintegration, so it says here. The people left Scotland and travelled overseas to settle in other countries. "For many born as a result of these dramatic times, the Highland Farewell will be a striking revelation into who you are."
Compay: So: this is who the descendants of Scottish people are? Who are they?
J: So far they are a 1980s soft-rock band. Ah. Now they are Enya with bagpipes, or else -
C: Lord of the Dance.
J: Yes, this one is a little bit like it. There are these places where the music crashes like the feet of a line of dancers striking the floor all at once.
C: Crash, yes, there! Which song is this?
J: 'By Law.' Oh, listen, inside the cover it says that they did not migrate voluntarily. They "were evicted from their homes in a most brutal and unforgiving fashion. The landlords replaced the people of the land with Cheviot sheep" - don't laugh Compay - "which would return a higher income than the high rents imposed on the crofters which were already too high for them to pay. As a result some fled to the cities like Glasgow and London, but a lot were herded onto ships and sent offshore to try and make a new life in unknown lands. Many died at sea."
C: This music was not worth dying for.
J: It says that the musician is the descendant of this diaspora. He comes from New Zealand.
C: [he takes the CD inlay and begins to look through the lyrics] I wonder if he has himself been to Scotland. I see 'crofters' sons' and children 'of the gael' but none of it sounds like real people. "All the days that we sat a'neath the rowan tree my love and I" - "never again would they laugh in the glen" - "T'was there that I read of the plight that they fled- " no, this is falsely sentimental. It sounds as if he took it from books.
J: No doubt he felt it very deeply when he wrote it.
C: He's drowning it. Listen to that noise, is it a synthesiser? It sounds like an electronic wave breaking over his voice and smothering it. Oh no, this guitar! Oh, this is a very bad Bon Jovi guitar, wa, wa, wa, wa, wa, what a screaming! What do they call those kinds of bands -
J: 'Big hair,' something like that.
C: Big hair. This is a 1980s guitar played by a man with big hair and tight jeans.
J: When did this CD come out?
C: It doesn't tell me, but when I look at the picture on the cover I think it must be recent. Good, that song has ended.
[ they stop talking and listen while a new song starts]
J: I prefer this one. What is it? You've got the booklet.
C: 'Scottish Soldier.' I recognise it. It's a popular traditional one. You can't ruin it too much. Ah, sad. The soldier is dying but his home is far away. [he sings] "And fair as these green foreign hills may be, they are not the hills of home. And now this soldier, this Scottish soldier, who wandered far away, and soldiered far away ... hmm, hmm, hmm." They have turned it into part of a story. At the beginning of the CD the songs tells us that the people have to leave, and then in the middle they talk about the journey and now that we are close to the end the people who had to leave are dying in other countries. The idea of making the songs into a story is clever, but that does not make up for the big hair guitar noise.
[They wait while 'Scottish Soldier' finishes and 'Southern Gael' begins.]
J: They're playing a fiddle. This is nice and fast.
C: [starts laughing] "Hey Jock, you're the southern Gael! You've made it here through the rain and hail!" Hey, Jock!
J: Oh dear. Oh dear.
C: Jock McDonald.
J: Of course.
C: This is no good. I can't take it seriously.
[And here the conversation ends. To summarise: Highland Farewell is the love child of dated '80s rock and the kind of old BBC specials about Dear Auld Bonnie Scotland Och Aye Th' Noo in which every second man is named Jock or Angus and spends his days hanging around in glens with his wee lassie buffing up his sporran. It gives Trainspotting another reason to exist.]
