Alasdair Roberts’s second album with Isle of Lewis singer Màiri Morrison belatedly follows on their collaboration on 2012’s ‘Urstan’.
Here they are assisted by Canadian bassist/musical arranger Pete Johnston and local musicians in Nova Scotia.
The two perform respectful renditions of ten traditional songs with Scottish roots which were collected in Maritime Canada by folklorist Helen Creighton (1899-1989).
Morrison sings some of the songs in Gaelic and Roberts’s sorrowful vocals are, as ever, well suited to melancholy material where feelings of woe and lonesomeness are never far away.
There’s no attempt to glamorise or modernise these story songs which tell of complicated courtships and traveller’s laments. A case in point is Katharine Jaffray where two suitors compete for a maiden’s hand and the bonny lass ends up marrying them both on the same day!
|
On the whole there’s a fairly mournful quality to a selection which ends with The Soldier’s Adieu.
Go into exile at your own risk is the overriding message.
Bandcamp link
|
