AMG Review of Best of the Chieftains [1992]

Bruce Eder
All Music Guide

Well, sort of. The 50 minutes of music here represent the best of the group's three albums (Chieftains 7, Chieftains 8, Boil the Breakfast Early) recorded for Columbia Records during 1977, 1978, and 1979. It's a good collection, and not a bad place to start for the new listener, though it won't offer any revelations for longtime fans, who'd tuned in long before this point in their history. The lineup during this era was Paddy Moloney (uillean pipes, tin whistle), Sean Keane (fiddle), Mick Tubridy (flute, tin whistle, concertina), Kevin Cunniffe (bodhran), Martin Fay (fiddle), Derek Bell (harp, timpan, oboe), and Sean Potts (tin whistle), with Matt Molloy (flute) replacing Mick Tubridy on Boil the Breakfast Early. The material, a good distillation of the best of those three albums, all sounds fine and represents the group's virtuoso sound from this period.