Tony McManus, Ceol More (Compass, 2002)
Ceol More is Scottish guitarist Tony McManus' third instrumental folk album. It includes mostly Celtic traditional tunes, but voyages also to Brittany, Quebec, Central Europe, and to the US for a Charles Mingus jazz tune. His complex style weaves threads around one other and this style unites the different tracks. His playing is uniformly relaxed though disciplined, and often quick and light, sometimes emphatic.
Tracks and songs in sets merge, style taking precedence over melody. Mileposts
include quick dance sets with fast trills: the Irish 
set
"Lady Ann Montgomery's/Eilish Brogan/Paddy Fahey's," the familiar "The King
Of the Pipers" and "An Droichead Bheag/The Chandelier," the latter tune written
by fiddler Liz Carroll. The slow Scots tune "Ye Banks and Braes" is quiter and
has a more contemporary arrangement. Another slow tune is a session reel, "The
Old Bush" played more like an air, with acoustic bass by Ewan Vernal sometimes
carrying the melody. The accompaniment on Ceol More is sparse, with Vernal
on bass; Guy Nicolson's tabla emphasizes contemporaneity on two tracks.
The album ends with the different, more Byzantine sound of a common Hebrew tune, "Shalom Aleichem." McManus is, I believe, tracked with himself on balalaika-style mandolin. It is a slow tune with influence from the New Acoustics. Mingus' slow "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat" is different as well and tucked in fourth. After listening to this tune, it is easier to find a jazz inluence in all of the tracks.
Ceol More did not "hit me" until I'd played it in the car at night, with the lights of White Salmon shimmering in the Columbia. Here is music for outbound journeys at night and for quiet evenings by firelight.
