COMPOSERS: Various
LABELS: REL
WORKS: World
PERFORMER: Enter the Haggis
CATALOGUE NO: RECD 529
ENTER THE HAGGIS, from Canada, is about tradition evolving and mixing. Don’t be put off by the cover, a candidate for all-time worst, or the group’s name (haggis is the verb’s subject, not the object). It begins with a Burns-night piping-in joined by keyboard chords and later a drum kit and guitars.
The updating of old songs is modest and lively, the new ones go for rather surreal fun. ‘Do they play the bagpipes on Mars?’ goes one mock-country chorus in a neat parable of global Americanisation. ‘Donald Where’s Yer Troosers?’ includes a police stop-and-search. If you persist to 12:38 on the final track there’s an unannounced and mildly obscene extra song.