Album Review

This albums title takes its name from a term used for a personal celebration of new life or a new birth and it no doubt involves whisky, given the Gaelic and Celtic origins of this collaboration between the familiar Alasdair Roberts and less-known (south of the border) Mairi Morrison. She hails from the remote coastal settlement of Bragar on Scotlands historic Isle of Lewis (an established radio-presenter and performer), while he is an obsessive of all things Gaelic and an accomplished songwriter in his own right, having issued a pile of revered folk-albums on this CDs home-label, Drag City. His previous partners in rhythm and rhyme have included Karine Polwart and Jackie Oates the boys got his chops, as they say. Both now live in Glasgow where they met and reconvened at a city bar called Coels Craic, a source of inspiration for the germination of the 12 songs on this curiosity of an album.

Predominantly sung in Gaelic by Morrison (with some non-Gaelic offered by Roberts), Urstan is definitely a collection of two halves. The first chunk is comprised of dram-soaked hoedowns and lullabies, of which The Laird O The Drum is the sweetest and Larach do Thacaidean the most insistent and catchy. Musically were talking a blend of acoustically-brandished traditionalism given a quirky modern bent by a band of crack (craic?) musicians, most of whom have reeled and jigged with the likes of Trembling Bells, Second Hand Marching Band and others, as well as Roberts himself.

The final third of the album is perhaps more emotionally-charged than the rest here The Tri-Coloured House and Am Faca Sibh Lilidh Tha Mise Ri Lorg? are rousing enough, yet have a minor-key undertow that befits the landscape from whence it came. And even with two-thirds of this consistent album sung in Gaelic, the words, the meanings and the stories still sound absorbing to my lazy English ears and they might do to yours. Inspiring, majestic and an unlikely but worthy consideration for some awards by the end of the year, methinks.

Catch the pair live around the UK when they take the album on tour in May.