lyndon nixon ([email protected])
Fri, 4 Dec 1998 04:15:21 -0800 (PST)
Music has the strength to move people to tears, and the power to heal
wounds, but even the greatest music is impotent before the evil of
those who orchestrated the Omagh bombing.
There's no question that this album is in a good cause, and the
sincerity of the contributing artists is beyond doubt. But though
Across The Bridge Of Hope will raise funds for the victims of the
North's worst atrocity, much of the music contained within may offer
only a slight salve for the mental and emotional scars.
Actor Liam Neeson sets a sombre but hopeful tone with a
reading from Seamus Heaney's The Cure At Troy, while
Sin�ad O'Connor takes an ABBA tune, Chiquitita, and turns it into a
wistful, childlike, comforting embrace. Van Morrison gets up close and
personal with an alternative acoustic version of The Healing Game,
helped along by Brian Kennedy, Paddy Moloney and Phil Coulter, while
U2 contribute Please, one of the more resonant songs from their Pop
album.
Boyzone and The Corrs are stymied by their limited powers of
expression: the twee cover of The Bee Gees' Words and the anodyne What
Can I Do seem completely inadequate.
Daniel O'Donnell manages to rise a little above this level with Beyond
The Great Divide, but it's The Divine Comedy's Neil Hannon who really
reaches the heights with the stirring, angry and ultimately cathartic,
Sunrise. Listen to it, think of Omagh, and weep. Kevin Courtney.
------------------------------------------------------
this public service is brought to you by ZeeK.
no lemons were abused in the creation of this e-mail.
==
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
-- Stephen Wright
_________________________________________________________
DO YOU YAHOO!?
Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b2 on Fri Dec 04 1998 - 04:16:10 PST