First, we must ask why this exists? It cannot solely exist for the drunken fratboy poker games it is destined to soundtrack. Simply, it exists because Johnny Depp — driven mad by or drunk on the power of Pirates of the Caribbean — has commissioned this, the second volume of pirate ballads, sea songs and chanteys. Depp’s presence accounts for the number of actors who appear here, from Ricky Jay to Anjelica Huston to Depp himself. Additionally, you get the musicians who you would expect to appear on a compilation of pirate songs: Tom Waits, Shane MacGowan, Patti Smith, as well as those you wouldn’t: Macy Gray, Broken Social Scene, Michael Stipe. In fact, there’s so many famous artists on here that some of them aren’t even mentioned anywhere on the CD itself. For example, Antony gives vocals to one track but isn’t identified anywhere other than the track auto-detect that my car picked up on.
As a whole, it’s an inconsistent album in terms of both style and quality; although with two discs of artists of differing genres, how could it be consistent? There are those songs where artists try to adapt the song to their own modern sound (such as Macy Gray’s “Off to Sea Once More,” which is a compelling reason to have more Macy Gray songs in the world) and those where they stay true to what a chantey is, such as the Tom Waits and Keith Richards performance of “Shenandoah,” which you can only appreciate if you enjoy Waits at his roughest and most incomprehensible. So by the same token that there’s a lack of consistency in the performances, there’s also likely at least a couple songs that a casual chantey appreciator can latch on to, like a barnacle to a galleon, or something. (Anti- Records, anti.com) Devin King