It's been a heady two weeks for appeared on NPR's "Weekend Edition Sunday," a post-St. Patrick's Day gig that boosted their national profile and started a run on their albums.
Liane Hansen of NPR interviewed Fine and Shigley about the genesis of the group and their approach to multilingual Celtic music. By Monday, that report ' complete with three tracks from their new album Lowena -- shot up to the top of the network's list for most emailed stories of the day.
John Lynch, a grad student at UCLA,
The short version... is that the lullaby is itself also the last words of a mother to her children, before she was let drown by a jealous handmaiden trying to steal her place at her husband's side. Since the handmaiden disguised what was essentially murder by claiming to have saved the children from drowning, the husband was fooled, for a time, until her heard the handmaiden (now his wife) singing this very lullaby to the children, which clued him in to the murder... How wonderfully bleak. And a lullaby, no less; it looks like Mother Goose and the Grimm Brothers have some company in the "twisted, violent children's tales" category. Only someone who'd spent their whole life at the mercy of the North Sea could have come up with something so incredibly dark, and yet hauntingly beautiful.
He wasn't the only person to take notice of the trio following the broadcast. By early Sunday afternoon, sales of their albums on CD Baby -- an online independent music retailer used by many Madison bands -- spiked quickly. As noted by Fine, the retailer was "on the ball and noticed the enormous number of hits coming in and were kind enough to get the website sorted out to keep taking orders today."
By last Monday, the trio's albums were listed in CD Baby's top sellers of the week There they stayed, through the morning after their CD release party at the High Noon last Wednesday, and on for another week.
As of the early afternoon of Thursday, Mar. 22, Navan's albums occupied the first (Lowena, fourth (Mairneas) and fifth (An Cuimhin Leat?) spots of the list--that is, their entire discography. There are even two copies of their new release selling for $29.99 on Amazon.com currently.
Lowena is one of two nominees for World Album of the Year in the 2007 Madison Area Music Awards. Their next show is scheduled for Saturday, Apr. 14, when they will play Tartan Day in Cedarburg.