Friday March 29, 2024
CD: Voices of the Valley
Review

CD: Voices of the Valley

By Damian Madden
August 16 2007

The cover of the Fron Male Voice Choir's Voices of the Valley is somewhat misleading. When you see the six shadowy figures and read that the they are billed as the world's oldest boy-band you get the impression that you are about to hear another Il Divo or Amici Forever. However, upon playing the CD it is evident that this is not the case. The Fron Male Voice Choir aren't six hunky, prepackaged quasi-opera singers, they are a sixty voice Welsh choir, a fact which probably makes them the world's largest boy-band as well.

Formed in the late 40s for the Llangollen International Musical Eisteddfod, the choir was initially started so that the nearby town of Froncysyllte were able to enter the male voice section of the eisteddfod. Taking most of its members from the youth club, the choir had the youngest membership of any Welsh male choir in 1947, a tradition they have tried to continue throughout their 60 year history.

Although the choir isn't in the popera mould, their album Voices of the Valley certainly is. While I'm not sure of the choir's regular repertoire, the inclusion of songs like The Rose, Shenandoah, You'll Never Walk Alone, Sailing, Danny Boy, Unchained Melody and the ubiquitous You Raise Me Up could only be seen as an attempt to put out an album that is going to appeal to as wide an audience as possible. A fact they must have achieved as this album raced up the pop charts and has sold around a half a million copies in the UK.

However, you can't make something out of nothing and while it is nice to hear these popular songs performed by a full choir the album doesn't bring anything truly groundbreaking or different to the table aside from You Raise Me Up being sung in Welsh. That's often the problem with performing the tried and true, more than likely they've been done before, better.

CD: Voices of the Valley

While this CD is certainly tolerable and makes for a nice soundtrack on a Sunday afternoon, one wonders how different it would have been if they'd focused on more traditional Welsh music and songs performed throughout the history of the choir. No doubt it wouldn't have sold as well or raced up the pop charts but it would have been a much more interesting album.

Voices of the Valley is out now through Universal.

 

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