Album Reviews
Movie Reviews
Concert Reviews

Top 10
Resources
Time Wasters
Contact Us

Celtic music typically brings to mind a number of instruments from fiddles to pipes, from whistles to guitars.  But for In Play, fiddler Liz Carroll and acoustic guitarist John Doyle decided to go it alone.  Doyle’s strumming provides both the percussive element and the rhythm, while Carroll’s fiddling is a refreshingly atypical take on Celtic music as she sounds classical at moments and even offers a Jewish feel in “The Man With One Kidney/The Spy Czar,” the strongest track on the album.

This minimal combination of instruments produces a sound that is often choppy, due to the lack of smoother instruments, but never to such an extent that it is unenjoyable.  Carroll and Doyle compensate for the lack of interplay among several instruments by varying the intensity of their own playing.  Fans of their particular instruments will be impressed, but other listeners might find the absence of others too noticeable.

Dan Singleton  5/2/06