If you have heard (or perhaps even used) one of those Karaoke backing tracks then you will have a pretty good idea what this album sounds like.
With the party theme set on "fiddle-centric" you get a dozen rousing waltzes, polkas and jigs so you can dance 'till you drop if you don't feel like singing.
The married couple behind the record are both Canadians who have performed separately for over two decades but never previously made an album together.
Natalie MacMaster is a "globally acclaimed" Cape Breton fiddle player and her husband is leader of the family group Leahy.
The press release is eager to big up the successes of their individual musical ventures; quantifying these in financial terms as if being a platinum seller is an automatic guarantee of quality.
Bizarrely, the record is produced by Bob Ezin, presumably at the loose end now that work from Pink Floyd, Kiss and Lou Reed has dried up although the Celtic couple are quick to report how "smitten" he is by their music.
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For Fiddler's Despair and Wedding Day Jig , the sound is spiced up with some distorted electric guitars but otherwise it's fiddling all the way.
Cagarian Gaolach is the only non-instrumental, although Natalie MacMaster's unaccompanied breathy lullaby lasts less than two minutes.
The virtuosity of the playing is beyond doubt but it is all so relentlessly jolly that the running time of 53:16 minutes seems like an eternity.
Natalie MacMaster's website
Donnell Leahy's website
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