outstanding Album!!  As a long time guitar picker and piano player and lover or the Irish, my wife and I were fortunate enough to have seen the boys live at Finnegan's Wake in Key West, Florida in August 1995. We bought the Another CD and have cherished it like gold since.  I even taught my wife the chords to Another Son. We're extremely saddened to know the fellas stopped playing.  Wish we knew where they were these days, especially if they're back in the emerald isle.  We'd go there to hear them!!
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when i heard the cd the 1st time i loved it and everytime i listen again it means even more. thank-you for a great irish outlook.
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Top honors this time go to New York-based Irish group Four to the Bar for their third album Another Son [FTB003]. Their last album, Craic on the Road, was a good live set of old songs, but it didn't thoroughly transcend the ballad- group style of the Clancys and the Irish Rovers. 

Another Son is a step forward in many ways. for one thing, there is more variety to the material. The band members wrote about half of the songs, took others from Donovan, Dick Gaughan, and William Butler Yeats, and added some energetic sets of tunes. Several of the original songs- -notably Pat Clifford's "The Western Shore," "Martin Kelleher's "The Shores of America" and David Yeates's "NY's for Paddy"--refer to the experience of emigration, which is still one of the biggest issues facing Ireland and Irish America. All three are powerful songs that demonstrate the profound ambivalence felt by most emigrants caught between a homeland they love and an adopted land where opportunities are better. 

Only two traditional songs appear, "The Newry Highwayman" and "Skibbereen." The former is one of the "good night" ballads relaying a criminal's last words from the gallows-- in fact it's the only "good night" ballad I know that actually contains the words "good night"! The latter is a heartbreaking tale of the famine and subsequent exodus from Ireland. Both, also, are emigration songs--The Newry Highwayman does his robbery in London's Grosvenor Square, and the narrators of Skibbereen have left Ireland behind. 

Each song is given an appropriate, contemporary, mostly acoustic and very Irish arrangement featuring guitar, fiddle, bouzouki, banjo, flute, whistle, bodhran, piano, bass... the usual Irish instruments. Keith O'Neill's fiery fiddling is a highlight (he's 1985's All-Ireland champion), as is David Yeates's resonant lead vocal. Check these guys out, they're here to stay.
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A New York Irish Celtic based Four to the Bar is made up of Martin Kelleher, David Yeates, Pat Clifford, and Keith O'Neill. Their first studio CD and third album, Another Son begins with a slow haunting "Newry Highwayman." The ghost of early Spirit of the West inhabits the title track while "Shelli Sullivan's" and "Getting Medieval" show their instrumental talents. "Catch the Wind" and "World Turned Upside-Down" show their interpretive side and "NY's for Paddy" has a commentary of the emigrants practical experience in New York. Another Son alludes to a band that have not had their fair share of acclaim. Four to the Bar are a very talented bunch indeed.
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