The "Corrs": Corner to Corner Book

The Corrs are undoubtedly the most beautiful folk band in the world so it's according that The Corrs--The Authorised Behind-The Scenes Book is a mainly pictorial history of Ireland's prodigal son-and-daughters team. Seven years of shots taken by long-time, semi-official photographer Paul Gaster, it charts the Corrs' rise, from their first official photo shoot in a studio's decaying back lot just outside Dublin, to a headlining gig playing to more than 42,000 people in Dublin's Lansdown Road stadium. It's the photography that's the book's main selling point--a lush 160 page tome, it's perfect for the coffee table--but regretfully for the fans, there's little here that approaches biographic detail and Gaster's prose occasionally rambles off into Amateur Photographer self-importance: "My own new gadget was a state-of-the-art camera with low-light lenses that would give the pictures better definition when not using the flash", he states at one point, apropos of very little. What The Corrs ... does successfully document, though, is the bands' visual growth--from a slightly twee, fiddle-folk beginning to their huge, poptastic stadium-slaying peak. And it's always interesting, of course, to see when that butter-wouldn't-melt sheen slips; the shot of Andrea Corr staring into the crowd at Lansdown Stadium and screaming in elated terror, for example--or conversely, the shot of a Corrs sister weeping into her hands, fatigued by a punishing tour schedule. As the saying goes, a picture sometimes paints a thousand words. --Louis PattisonRead More