Urstan

Mairi Morrison is a Gaelic-speaking actress and singer from Scotland's Western Isles with a lifelong immersion in Gaelic music. Though Glasgow-based Alasdair Roberts is the son of a traditional musician, his own music (both under his own name and his early albums leading the experimental-folk collective Appendix Out) has veered between forward-looking original tunes and sometimes-idiosyncratic adaptations of traditional tunes. Though Urstan is more deeply rooted in Gaelic folk than most of Roberts' earlier albums, with only two original songs among its dozen tracks, it's by no means an old-style traditional Scottish folk album. Over a core acoustic trio of Roberts' guitar, bass or piano and drums, layers of fiddle, accordion, pipes, harmonium, horns and cello enrich the tunes underneath Morrison's fluty vocals and Roberts' more diffident delivery. The song selections will be mostly unfamiliar to the casual folk fan: only "The Tri-Colored House," a variation of the ballad now forever known as "Scarborough Fair," will ring a bell, and even it's an obscure variant. But there's an approachability to Urstan that will appeal to those who find the earnest faux-authenticity of too many folk artists difficult to swallow: it's an album of its time as well as timeless.