Yet We Sing

Germany has enjoyed a long-standing love affair with Celtic music, and Cara, featuring four of Germany's finest traditional musicians and Scottish singer-songwriter and pianist Kim Edgar, have been notably successful there for the past dozen years. On their fifth studio album, Gudrun Walther joins Edgar on lead vocals and also contributes fiddle and diatonic accordion while Hendrik Morgenbrodt plays uilleann pipes and flutes with Jürgen Treyz on guitars and dobro, and Rolf Wagels on bodhrán. Walther and Edgar, accomplished songwriters both, draw on tradition but write very much in a contemporary style. Several lyrics seem informed by mortality, yet are never morbid. The title-track, for instance, closes the album with a poignant reminder that if you allow yourself to succumb to the fear of death, or suffer too much with the pain of losing a loved one, then you can’t celebrate the life you live. ‘The Naked Man in the Whirlpool’ is a saucy instrumental evocation of a collective sojourn in Tuscany while limbering up for the recording. Cara are even confident enough to take on the mighty Planxty with their own spirited version on ‘Little Musgrave’.