By Mike Farragher

IT was indeed heartening to see the Irish score chart gold this week! Celtic Woman’s new CD, A New Journey, sold 77,000 units, bested by another woman, Norah Jones, whose Not Too Late disc grabbed the top spot on the Billboard 200 album charts with 405,000 copies sold.

“Celtic Woman is a phenomenon,” enthuses Manhattan Records’ general manager Ian Ralfini. “A New Journey entering at number four proves that there is a healthy demand for adult music in today’s marketplace. We are proud to be a part of their many successes, having already sold over two million units, and look forward to many more reasons to celebrate in the future.”

The timing could not be better for Celtic Woman made up of Chloe, Orla, Lisa, Mairead, Maev and Hayley, who will be embarking on an 88 city tour this spring that includes two Radio City Music shows on March 16 and 17, with the St. Patrick’s night gig already sold out.

This is the third CD released by the group and the first to feature Hayley Westenra, who joined Celtic Woman for the recording of the DVD Celtic Woman, A New Journey in Slane Castle last summer.

Hailing from New Zealand, with strong Irish ancestry, Hayley is a star in her own right, with both of her solo albums achieving to date, combined sales of over three million albums. This disc is essentially the soundtrack of the DVD, so there is little in the way of surprises for CW fans.

If seeing old Irish standbys like “Carrickfergus,” “Scarborough Fair,” and “Dulaman” on TV was not enough, then you can have the lasses in your car stereo as well.

Being one of the first American journalists to write about the group, I waved the Celtic Woman flag high and wide because of the imaginative production and song selection of the group’s producer, David Downes.

On the first disc, there was a gentle mixture of traditional Irish tunes and orchestral interpretations of studio processed gems from the Enya and Clannad catalogs. After the third disc, this formula no longer seems innovative, though it is still pleasant to the ear.

It’s particularly nice to see the group tackle unchartered terrain, as they do on Clannad’s “Newgrange.” The Donegal group is a particularly hard band to duplicate, but Downes does a remarkable sound at retooling the Clannad sound to make something new.

As this is the third disc, one must wonder how many musty old tunes they have left to trot out to an insatiable Irish American audience. There are plenty of modern trad compositions from the likes of Solas and Sharon Shannon that could use the heat of the white hot spotlight of a Celtic Woman show.

One casual scan of Irish music magazine Hot Press or a search for Irish band on Myspace will tell you that the well worn traditional ditties, while an important part of our culture, are not indicative of what is going on in Ireland today.

Lord knows there is plenty of modern connectivity within the individual players’ resumes. Mairead Nesbitt, the fiery fiddler of the group, has worked with groundbreakers like Clannad and Sinead O’Connor, and was once in the touring band of the Afrocelt Sound System. It would be great if Downes would let the woman loose to bring some of those elements into the mix on future albums. That would be something.

Instead, we get a Broadway treatment of our culture once again; they even throw in a cloying a capella read of “Over the Rainbow” from The Wizard of Oz. It makes one wish for a house to blow on top of their handlers.

So, on the week that they rule the American charts, I raise a toast for their success and say a silent prayer that the next production of Celtic Woman breaks the tired formula to create artistic magic that matches the strength of the spell they have cast on the PBS viewers who bought the CD last week.