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Written in fRoots issue 376, Oct 2014


MILLADOIRO
A Quinta Das Lágrimas
Discmedi Blau CORDM 1345-02 (2014)(Original release 2008)

From the lush, romantic first track, a setting of a Fernando Pessoa poem featuring Portuguese fadista Mafalda Arnauth with guitar, harp, clarinet and strings backing, anyone familiar with Galician traditional instrumental band Milladoiro’s earlier work, which goes all the way back to 1979, wouldn’t spot this album as the same band. But hey, after nineteen albums it’s good to see them still trying things.
     Actually a re-release of their 2008 (but still most recent) CD, it commemorates King Pedro of Portugal and his Galician lover Inés de Castro, who was only recognised as his wife, and so Queen of Portugal, after her murder.
     Though there are occasional instrumentals it’s essentially an album of songs, from Arnauth and Galician Laura Amado, and equally mellifluous male vocals which presumably are Milladoiro’s frets and keys multi-instrumentalist Antón Seoane. Of the historically distinctive sounds of Milladoiro, while Roi Casal’s harp has a key role, Xose Ferreirós’s gaita doesn’t appear until track 4. It’s followed by the almost-Caribbean swing and ‘too-do-doo-doo’ backing vocals of a Jose Alonso song Venham Mais Cinco, again fronted by Arnauth, and an Amado-sung setting of  a poem in Galician-Portuguese from the 13th-century Cantigas de Santa Maria de Alonso. The treatment of the Manoel Antonio poem Sós, with both Arnauth and Amado, is big and glossy in almost torch-ballad style. And then, contrastingly to close, there’s an instrumental, guitar-strumming, accordion, fiddle, flutes, bodhrán and the octet’s other resurces in a pair of northern-Portuguese tunes.

www.discmedi.com



© 2014 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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