Record Rack

*** The Chieftains, “Tears of Stone,” RCA Victor. It took three years to put together the star-studded array of female guest artists for this exquisite album, and it was worth every minute of effort. The cast alone is extraordinary--including Bonnie Raitt, Joni Mitchell, Sinead O’Connor, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Loreena McKennitt, Joan Osborne and Diana Krall. But all-star lineups don’t necessarily guarantee artistic achievement, and Moloney’s real accomplishment is the number of successful musical marriages he has made here between performers and songs.

Raitt’s passionate rendering of “A Stor Mo Chroi,” for example, finds an unexpected intersection between the blues and Irish balladry. And Mitchell’s “Magdalene Laundries” captures the song’s anger without losing her inimitable style. Krall’s dark velvet rendering of “Danny Boy” revives its original spirit.

There are other gripping moments, such as actress Brenda Fricker’s rendering of the Yeats poem “Never Give All the Heart” and O’Connor’s touching “Factory Girl.” And as a final flourish of female Celtic power, there is a stirring, 10-minute fiddle jam that features Eileen Ivers, Natalie McMaster, Maire Breatnach and Norwegian hardanger fiddler Annbjorg Lien.

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Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (excellent). The albums are already released unless otherwise noted.