Your reviewer has always maintained you can tell a lot about an artist when you consider the quality of his or her B-sides. In this respect, you can always trust JAMES YORKSTON, because last year's excellent 'Roaring The Gospel' compilation - ostensibly a collection of lost singles, B-sides and out-takes – was more than good enough to have been considered his fourth album proper.
So, artistically, W&H's favourite Fife native continues to set himself a tall artistic order when the time comes for that 'official' fourth album comes around. Not that you'd know it from the quiet nonchalence of 'When The Haar Rolls In', though, for – after the dreamy Andalucian landscapes that informed 2006's more experimental 'The Year Of The Leopard' - Yorkston and his discerning Athletes have returned to the braw, but beautiful Scottish landscape to craft yet another quiet masterpiece.
As always, the lure of temptation and the scent of regret emanates from these windblown, folk-tinged tales. Tunes like 'Summer's Not The Same Without You' (“I miss your short-skirted dignity/ you put me in my place and that's exactly where I need to be”), the wryly-observed 'Tortoise Regrets Hare' and the deceptively-pretty, piano-flecked affair of 'Temptation' (“if all it takes is envy and the mention of her name to drive you off the rails...”) demonstrate that our James is still a sucker for roving, romance and the flutter of a pair of brown eyes. Or blue or green ones, come to that.
Inevitably, our hero often ends up pished and disappointed as a result of his dalliances in these songs, but that doesn't mean the majority of 'When The Haar Rolls In' doesn't slide down like a particularly fine malt regardless. As always, too, The Athletes are a joy to behold, as they play with a restrained grace sorely missing from most ensembles these days. On songs like the elegant 'Queen Of Spain' and the title track ('Haar' refers to the damp sea mist rolling in off the North sea, incidentally) they play with remarkable intuition, joining the dots and colouring where required, but always holding off for the sake of the common good. Sure, some of the arrangements recall the lusher feel of Yorkston's debut 'Moving Up Country' (not least the almost hymnal 'Would You Have Me Born With Wooden Eyes?' and the semi-orchestral flourish of the gorgeous, closing 'The Capture Of The Horse') but nothing ever sounds bombastic or hurried and the end results are all the better for it.
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Despite the excellence surrounding it, though, the album's finest moment is probably the one cover here: the particularly charged 6 minutes 30 seconds of Lal Waterson's 'Midnight Feast'. Yes, the song itself is a distinguished British folk staple and Yorkston is given admirably passionate vocal support from no less than Mike & Norma Waterson along the way, but it's the song's execution that really hits home: the way the music's dramatic ebb'n'swell shifts between the reined-in tension of the verses and the rousing roar of the choruses and the way it recalls the likes of both Fairport Convention's epic 'A Sailor's Life' and also the drone-y majesty of Yorkston's Krautrock favourites such as Can and Faust. It's one occasion where describing something as 'epic' really is accurate for a change.
OK, so you could argue James Yorkston breaks no new ground with 'When The Haar Rolls In.' There is, after all, less of the gentle experimentalism that crept into 'The Year Of The Leopard', although the live, close-miked feel of the songs suggests the intimacy and spontaneity that can only be achieved when musicians who trust and believe in each other are thrust together remains gloriously intact. Besides, at this stage, you'll have either bought a pint and ensconced yourself in the nearest available snug with these songs or chosen to stay outside and be left cold. Personally, I'm more than happy inside with my IPA and the roaring fire. Winter is, after all, on the way.
(http://www.jamesyorkston.co.uk)
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