A little disclaimer, here. I am a landlubber. I get nervous when I am out of sight of, or even off of, land. I don't like flying. And I really don't like boats. I get nervous driving over the Lake Ponchetrain Bridge when I reach the halfway point and can't see land on either side. Nope. Give me land.

It is probably as a result of the foregoing that I haven't been much of a sea shanty type of guy. If I were keelhauling the ballast or whatever the hell you do on a ship to keep it upright and off the rocks I would probably be singing "oh there was an old man/with no hair on his head/five feet and seven inches/he hugged the deck/in fear of wreck/instead of cinching winches" or something like that. All of this makes my attraction, and affection, for "TURN" by Great Big Sea so improbable.

Or maybe not. These guys, all of whom hail from Newfoundland, are superb instrumentalists, and terrific vocalists. And they have the knack for rendering their very traditional, sea-village music in a way that is appealing to modern ears. I can only think of a couple of artists who have been able to carry this off --Steeleye Span, Pentangle, recent Fairport Convention -- and now we can add one more to the list.

"TURN" is almost evenly divided between traditional numbers, such as "Jack Hinks" and "Old Brown's Daughter," and band-penned songs. It is to Great Big Sea's credit that the CD does not sound choppy as a result. There is even, to mine ears, what sounds like a single (!) on "TURN," titled "Boston And St. John's," a beautiful, angst-laden ballad about a sailor leaving his lover to go to sea, and promising, almost desperately, that he will be back. This dialogue has taken place, in one form or another, since Phoenicians ruled the waves, and there of course have been many, many songs dealing with this topic passed down through the ages. Yet this song, penned by Great Big Sea's Alan Doyle, has a timelessness about it that would render it contemporary in 1800 or 2000 or any and all points in between.

TURN has the potential to succeed on many levels. It has the capacity to succeed across several different genres -- light rock, new age, folk -- while not being comfortably classifiable into any particular one exclusively. And, unlike all your other CDs, this one actually gets better and better after repeated listening. Very highly recommended.