The Beatles: Yellow Submarine (EMI)Forget Austin Powers and The Phantom Menace - the fabtastic Yellow Submarine has been rereleased on video and DVD, and we can relive the terror of The Blue Meanies, reacquaint ourselves with the Nowhere Man, and get seriously psychedelic with Lucy, Eleanor Rigby and Sgt Pepper. In reality, however, the Beatles' cartoon movie is a bit of a slog to get through, and the songs lean heavily towards the Fab Four's children's songbook. Yellow Submarine certainly is a visual treat, but can't compete with that other 1960s cartoon classic, The Jungle Book, for storyline, characters and humour. Hey Bulldog and It's All Too Much, however, definitely have the edge over I Wanna Be Like You and The Bare Necessities.
Kevin Courtney
Various Artists: Ten Years Of Rock Fleadh (BMG)
What better way to celebrate 10 years of the Fleadh than with a random selection of artists who have appeared at the Finsbury Park festival during the past decade? No, really, there must be a better way. Add a companion CD covering folk artists who have done the Fleadh, and you have a couple of hours of easy listening while you wait for the beer tent to open. The 20 tracks on Ten Years Of Rock include Bob Dylan's I Want You, The Pretenders' Don't Get Me Wrong and Rory Gallagher's Loan Shark Blues, plus such perennial compilation fare as Clannad's Theme From Harry's Game, Ash's Oh Yeah and Van Morrison's Brown Eyed Girl. If these had been live recordings then this album might have been mildly interesting, but listening to this boring bunch of originals is like spending a day at the supermarket.
Kevin Courtney
Celine Dion: Au Coeur Du Stade (Epic)
A souvenir of the concert Celine Dion never got to play in Ireland this year? Yes and no. It is a "live" recording of a gig last June but, as recorded at the Stade de France in Paris, it's - not surprisingly - largely in French. Apart from a rousing, nearly eight-minute long version of Let's Talk About Love, which opens the show; and My Heart Will Go On, that closes it. So does this mean that Celine, had she played here this summer, might have sung 90 per cent of her songs in Irish? I suspect not. Sung in French are perfectly-crafted Europoplike tracks such as Dans un autre monde, S'il suffisait d'aimer and On ne change pas. But best of all is the Medley Acoustique. Even so, for Celine completists only.
Joe Jackson
The Rough Guide to Calypso & Soca (World Music Network)
Another interesting compilation from those well-travelled people at the Rough Guide organisation. This time the music hails from the Caribbean, specifically the island of Trinidad, where calypso is the traditional form of song. Soca is its more modern relative, full of pop synths and bouncy rhythms, while the edgier rapso, which also gets an airing, is soca meets rap, creating a form of soul toasting as with Brother Resistance's Cyar Take Dat. But it is the more traditional sounds of calypso via the work of those such as Lord Pretender and The Mighty Sparrow that catches the ear with its fetching (though cliched) images of smiling faces, white beaches and rolling surf. That may still be true in the tourist areas, but Caribbean ghettoes are as dismal and angry as any other, and the rapso tracks reflect this fact.
Joe Breen
Bruce Cockburn: Breakfast in New Orleans, Dinner in Timbuktu (Ryko)
The legendary Canadian folk singer turned born-again Christian turned folk-rocker turned world music advocate turned 50 in 1995, so the changes Bruce Cockburn has gone through are reasonable. Affection for Cockburn's music grows with repeated listening; this album only started making sense after a couple of times around the dance floor. But there is a richness in the melodies and the lyrics, his intricate guitar playing and the arrangements which repays handsomely the time invested. Cockburn dips and dives into whatever genre takes his fancy, so there are spoken songs, atmospheric instrumentals (Use Me While You Can), emotional covers (Blueberry Hill), collaborations (Lucinda Williams and Margo Timmins) and snatches of beautifully-paced yearning such as the superb Look How Far. It is the kind of album that the more you listen, the more you hear.
Joe Breen