The cerebral aspect of Celtic music, whether it's Irish or Scottish, is a well-known and well-loved side of the repertoire. Here is an intriguing Celtic mix from the USA, England, and Canada. While all of these CDs aim for the cerebral end of Irish music, they don't always make the mark. This set of three Celtic Party Animals (for want of a better term) offer some degree of fun with one exception.

Sunday's Well's We Don't Care Where Your Parents Are From was released by East Side Digital in 1994. This CD by a Boston-based outfit has been out a while, but listening to it now shows how well it has aged. It mixes Irish and American folk and ballad styles with Irish and European Traditional tunes rendered with plenty of energy and life. Lot of good musicians are involved, including guitarist John McCann, fiddler Joseph Kessler and accordionist Noel Scott whom I knew in college in Limerick when he played a band called Tog e Go Bog e years before Kila seized the hit song of the same name. Sunday's Well, named after a scenic place in Cork City, play a diet of mostly well-known pieces, but do it well. The song list includes 'Ordinary Man', 'Raggle Taggle Gypsy', and 'Sitting on Top of the World', all belted out with enthusiasm, and Dominick Behan's rebel rousing 'Black & Tans' includes a Hendrix-influenced guitar solo from John McGann. There's some good instrumental work on 'O'Keefe's Set' with Noel Scott's accordion out front, and Caoimhe Ni Mhaoileoin's tin whistle is featured on a moody take on Finbar Furey's 'Lonesome Boatman'. We Don't Care Where Your Parents Are From is good fun, well played. and definitely one to recommend if Celtic Rock of an Irish-American-meets-Waterboys-and-Punk-Folk type is your scene.

When I initially saw Sham Rock's Sham Rock: The Album with credits for keyboards and programming and dire wannabee-Irish cover graphics, my initial impression was not good. Listening to it confirmed my suspicions, and I have to confess that this Celtic/Dance cum electronic ambient trio and bad lounge act does absolutely nothing for me. Recorded in London, Sham Rock: The Album takes a leaf from the books of fellow English TechnoCelts' Dance to Tipperary, subjecting familiar Irish folk songs, to Rave Club and Dance Floor arrangements swathed in computerized backings and pulsating drum programs. Where Dance to Tipperary had a huge driving sound, acting as an ideal backdrop for holidaymakers in Irish bars in Ibiza. Much of Sham Rock: The Album aims for the same formula of popular folk songs rendered as disco anthems. This results in mad dashes through 'Tell Me Ma' and 'Whiskey in the Jar' with caterwauled vocals, dinky keyboards combined with Corrs fiddle/whistle flourishes, and tacky rhythm tracks. The only effort of this type that actually works is 'Lavender's Blue', completely rewritten and subject to a cool ambient treatment. The other school of thought evident on Sham Rock: The Album is melodramatic cabaret treatment on 'Danny Boy', 'To Althea from Prison', and 'Parcel of Rogues'. The best effort of this type is a straight version of Paul McCartney's 'I'm Carrying', where a simple acoustic arrangement frames Anne Barrett's strong vocals in a positive light. Sham Rock: The Album to my ears is a marketing person's dream but a listener's nightmare. It smacks of corporate contrivance, and the total lack of character and individuality smacks of bargain basement idealism. It's a catastrophic mess, so awful it's almost funny.

The Crofters' Hold My Beer While I Kiss Your Girlfriend is a Canadian release. Mixing bagpipes with a rock rhythm section, it sounds like a garage band and a pipe major in one room. It's high octane, as demonstrated in the cocky energetic grunge treatment of 'Scotland The Brave', where familiar pipe marches are rendered with a rock and roll attitude. Their treatment of 'Henry My Son' is different from The Prodigals version, and their all-out blast on 'Whiskey in the Jar' and 'Some Say the Devil Is dead' packs plenty of punch. The punky three-chord trash of 'I Met My Father' suggests an identifiable band sound in the Pogues/Steve Earle/John Mellencamp mould. With its all-out rock approach, it is limited in scope and outlook as regards subtlety and refinement, but is good-time fun at heart. Taking bagpipes and high energy Celtic Rock and putting them together, they kick out a good noisy no-nonsense blast. Unlike Shamrock, The Crofters are the kind of band that I would like to have playing at my Irish bar -- if I had one that is. They offer good solid bar-band-flavoured Celtic rock and roll of the first order.

So there we have it, from the sublime to the ridiculous and back again; the party spirit is evident in these releases but the fact remains that banks of machinery cannot compensate for flesh and blood musicianship.