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While listening to "Polichinelle" you don’t know whether to cry over the beauty of Tinley’s voice and lyrics or over the fact that the Irish band, The Prayer Boat, hasn’t released an album since this 1999-released effort. It’s as if James Dean and Marilyn Monroe had simply quit instead of dying. No please, don’t stop! Go on; keep on doing what you do best. We’d all appreciate it. But then again, don’t all Irish stories end sad?
Nothing has been changed from the original in this remastered 10th anniversary edition of "Polichinelle". If you’re aware of the fight the band went through to secure an uncompromised vision in the original release, you can appreciate the lack of change. Prayer Boat’s lead singer, Emmett Tinley, ululates in echoing, blue-tenor beauty throughout the album. The entire band delivers pure melancholy. But melancholy is too flat a word. This is the melancholy after the storm, after the fight and the regret, and looking out my New York apartment window at the bright yellow glimmer of the end of the clouds on the horizon, maybe I will make that call, maybe things will get better, if I can only get past this sunset and the dull twist-in-the-stomach beauty of the droplets on the pane—that kind of melancholy. Always poetic, never manipulative; "Polichinelle" is a refreshingly honest, and musically satisfying album from start to finish.
How do you get to the river Ganges? Somebody go send a wish that Prayer Boat will release another album.

(The Prayer Boat on MySpace)