These Are The Moments by The Rankin Family

February 5, 2009 - Metro News Canada

By Graham Rockingham

The Rankin Family
Album: These Are The Moments
Label: MapleMusic/Universal
Rating: ** 1/2

The Rankins are all grown up now and seeking an adult contemporary market.

Turning to songwriters like new age pianist Jim Brickman probably isn’t the way to go about it.

The synth and drum collisions in the lead single Breathe Dream Pray Love tend to enhance the frailty in Heather’s vocal delivery, unfairly rendering it to little more than a squeak. The Rankins’ strength lies in the Celtic innocence of their vocal harmonies and the power of Jimmy’s country-tinged songwriting.

The fact that they turned to outside songwriters on two of the six new tracks on this album demonstrates a lack of direction and perhaps, commitment.

Unfortunately, the best material on this 13-track CD are the remixes of older material. These Are The Moments is only really half an album, something to sell to the fans on tour.

Fewer great moments without John Morris

Less Cape Breton, more generic pop

February 5, 2009 - Montreal Gazette

By Mike Regenstreif, Freelance

The Rankin Family

These Are the Moments

Longview Music/MapleMusic Recordings/Universal

Rating 3 out of five

Back in their heyday - which was most of the 1990s - the five brothers and sisters of Nova Scotia's Rankin Family did have something special going on with their fusion of traditional down- home fiddle tunes, old folksongs and new material that blended strains of contemporary folk, country and pop.

Theirs was a distinctly regional sound that could have only come from Cape Breton Island. The essence of their music was in the fiddling of John Morris Rankin and the haunting sibling harmonies of Raylene, Heather, Cookie and Jimmy. The band broke up in 1999 and reunited in 2007. These Are the Moments includes six new songs and six more drawn from their early catalogue and Reunion TV special.

Those gorgeous vocal harmonies are still the drawing card on the CD's new tunes. But they're now making a more generic kind of pop music that could have come from almost anywhere. Sadly, John Morris died in a car crash in 2000 and the sound of his fiddle, anchored in centuries of traditional tunes, is sorely missed. It was that distinctly Cape Breton sound that made the Rankin Family special, and there's not much of it there in pleasant, easy-to-listen-to new songs like Breathe Dream Pray Love.

Things are better on the CD's back half. The older tunes include remixed versions of Fare Thee Well Love and Rise Again, the two most achingly beautiful songs they ever recorded. The lush harmonies on those two songs can still lift a listener to a higher plane.

The most infectious track is You Feel the Same Way, Too,

an infectious Nashville-meets-Mabou romp from 1995 and the one song on the album where the fiddling, the front-porch mandolin picking and quick vocal hand-offs remind us of how much fun the Rankin Family could be.

The biggest problem with this album is that in blending new and older material, the newer stuff pales in comparison. Knock half a point off the three-star rating for the first half of the album and add half a point to the second half.

Podworthy: Fare Thee Well Love

The Rankin Family performs Feb. 25 at Théâtre St. Denis, 1594 St. Denis St. Tickets cost $39.50 to $54.50. Call 514-790-1111 or order at www.ticketpro.ca