Loch in

In Scottish preservation Capercaillie trust

by Don Fluckinger

For Capercaillie, it pays to diversify. Earthier than the Cocteau Twins but definitely more progressive and ambient than their folk musician peers, they sound Scottish enough to be authentic, yet modern enough to be very entertaining.

The octet -- appearing at the Iron Horse tonight -- just released Beautiful Wasteland, their ninth and latest CD. Part ambient, part ethereal, yet very well grounded in Celtic melody, harmony, and instrumentation, the disc appeals both to the folk-music crowd and to a trendier pop audience.

The album features a line-up of very traditional instruments (bouzouki, flute, acoustic guitar, uillean pipes, whistle, berembau) yet was coproduced by Capercaille keyboard player Donald Shaw and mixmaster Calum Malcolm, who made his mark twiddling the knobs for technopop bands such as Prefab Sprout and Blue Nile.

All that being said, fans and critics have a tough time categorizing Capercaille. Are they folk, alternative, or world music? "It's all the same thing," says Shaw, who cofounded Capercaille with vocalist Karen Matheson while attending Oban High School, on Scotland's west coast, in 1984. "I suppose folk music to Americans has always had a certain political slant to it ever since the heyday of the '60s. But I think that what's happening in folk music and particularly Celtic music is not necessarily out to make any statements about what's happening socially in the world -- I think it's about a music form."

Capercaillie recorded four albums in their back yard of Scotland in their early years, released in the United States on Green Linnet. Their records did okay in their homeland, but awareness of the group multiplied after they performed the 400-year-old song "Coisich a Ruin" for A Prince Among Islands, a 1991 BBC television documentary in which Prince Charles promoted the Gaelic culture. The single went on to become the first Gaelic Top 40 single in the UK, and the album on which the song appeared, 1996's Delirium, sold 100,000 copies.

Although they started out playing very traditional music, Shaw says, Capercaille were adding more pop influences, "moving beyond the roots of the music into something more overblown and ambitious."

Then came another big break. The English arm of BMG signed Capercaillie and hooked them up with new-jack-swing trendsetters Soul II Soul. The collaboration ultimately was not successful, financially and creatively, so the band and label parted ways. "Originally the project was quite interesting because we had some ideas on it, but it kind of got taken out of our hands," Shaw says of the work they did with BMG.

"Toward the end of the relationship, most of the phone calls used to come from business affairs as opposed to anyone who had to do with the artistic side of things. That's just the way a lot of these music companies work, it's like the guy who signs the checks is more important than the people who have a real belief in the music."

Ironically, in the midst of this "remix" period, the group composed and performed some very traditional music for the film Rob Roy.

LA-based director Michael Caton-Jones remembered the band from his days living in his Scottish hometown of Broxburn, and invited them to record several tracks of incidental music. Additionally, Matheson appears in one scene singing a Gaelic lament, "Aileen Duinn," a song that also appears on the soundtrack.

That's all ancient history, though, as Capercaillie have moved into a new phase of their career. Their American label now is Rykodisc, which the band chose despite receiving several offers from major labels. Recorded in Andalusia, Spain, and in Glasgow, the calming, blissful music on Beautiful Wasteland is certifiably free of any new-jack-swing grooves, although the sound is solidly built on clean-sounding, bass-heavy '90s studio production. Still, the main emphasis is on Matheson's gorgeous vocals and on the work of 12-year Capercaille veteran fiddler Charlie McKerron -- and despite some unusual sounds, every note on the album was made by the band with real instruments.

When they play live, however, Capercaillie leave the studio trickery behind.

"We did experiment a year ago on tour in Britain with some backing tapes -- we felt uncomfortable; it sort of went against what we were trying to do live," Shaw says. Yet the traditional-versus-pop dichotomy still is important to Capercaille, he adds -- it's the experimentation with modern sounds that keeps the band going.

"I don't think we would've been able to go this far as a band if we hadn't been following our nose musically. I think if we'd been trying to make the same album every time we went in to record, we would have been bored out of existence by now."

Capercaillie play at 7 and 9:30 p.m. on June 12 at the Iron Horse, in Northampton. Tickets are $18.50. Call (413) 586-8686.