One of
Ives' most successful theme albums, featuring a brace of songs on which he would be expected to (and does indeed) excel with, including "Molly Malone," etc. The tone is mostly light and sentimental, though as with many seemingly innocuous Irish songs, politics does seem to lurk just below the surface, owing to the island's history -- and a few are more direct. About the only songs missing, on hearing it five decades on, are pieces like "Wild Colonial Boy" and "The Pulse of an Irishman" (which was good enough for Beethoven to adapt, after all). ~ Bruce Eder