Cara Dillon – The Redcastle Sessions

07 August 2008, 13:26 | Written by Simon Rueben

(Articles)

Comprising live performances of songs taken from her first three solo albums, The Redcastle Sessions is a DVD release that sees folk artist Cara Dillon performing at various locations around her home of Ireland. Before going solo in 2001, Dillon has performed in various groups, most notably in Equation and Polar Star. Her most recent album, 2006′s After the Morning contained her most notable song, the excellent ‘Never In A Million Years’, which gathered much praise upon its release.

Cara Dillon and her band perform in a spacious Irish house, interspersed with her musings on her life, and her art, and country of origin. In-between songs Cara is shown rambling across the fields in a big coat, and shooting the breeze with a farmer in a cowshed before joining her band to perform another song in a cavernous living room. The problem is, this makes the performances rather stilted, the whole thing coming across as an extended edition of Songs of Praise. You keep on expecting to see Aled popping up to link into an item on poorly children or abseiling vicars. The camera work is too uninteresting to capture the attention and her musings on life too whimsical to be of any concern.

That said, on the whole the performances are strong, particularly ‘I Wish You Well’, the musicians seated performing in a tight, melodic circle, strummed guitar and mandolin dominating the track. ‘If I Prove False’ is also wonderful, Cara and husband Sam Lakeland (brother of Seth) performing nose to nose. The sound though is far to clean throughout, sounding pre-recorded rather than live and spontaneous.

The in-between interviews are more adverts to visit Ireland than anything else, clips of sunsets on beaches whilst Cara looks moodily out to sea. The highlight is the final clip, a performance in a bar in Dungiven, which contains the life and vitality lacking elsewhere. Whilst the musicianship is excellent throughout, this release is somewhat cold and uninviting, and could have benefited from the reactions of a live audience as apposed to the sterile recordings they captured.
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Links
Cara Dillon [myspace]