Kate Rusby
Album: Ghost
Label: Pure
Tracks: 12
Website: http://www.katerusby.com

Ghost is trailed as "Kate's first album of all-original material since 2010", a claim which if taken in the purely literal sense is a touch misleading, since only three of its dozen songs are entirely (both words and music) written by Kate herself - the remainder either using, or being largely based on, or comprising Kate's arrangements of (and/or tunes for), traditional words, with one track, The Night Visit, employing Tony Cuffe's melody - the one usually associated with When I First Came To Caledonia - with the traditional text).

Having got the nit-picking of that semantic conundrum out of the way at the outset, let me say that this is a wholly delightful album, which at one and the same time conforms to the expected aural picture of a typical Kate Rusby record and yet breaks new ground with the imaginative (and sometimes unexpectedly spare) nature of its musical settings and thus in the increased satisfaction the attentive listener is able to derive from the experience. Taking the disc's true original compositions first, After This is a chimingly defiant beacon of hope, Ghost itself a deftly imagined, if quite desolate, vox-and-piano Lied, and We Will Sing a liltsome little seasonal (coming of spring) ditty inspired by tradition. But the album's emotional core is most likely to be considered the forlorn I Am Sad, a masterfully simple poetic evocation (which, I discover to my surprise, is credited as traditional); here, Kate's voice is fondly cradled and caressed within some particularly lovely, and beautifully complementary, tenor guitar traceries from Damien O'Kane and Steven Byrnes.

The remaining traditional items fall into two stools: ballads and altogether lighter material. Kate once again proves herself an adept exponent of both, with her vocal charm and irresistible personality enabling her to get the songs' messages across with absolute conviction; close attention to the dynamic shadings of her voice will be amply rewarded and should silence those perennial detractors who continually charge her with overly prettified singing. Listen - for there are indeed darker overtones too… The ballads are invariably given lilting (even slightly wistful) musical settings whose arrangement may be thought by some to belie the depth and subtlety in Kate's interpretations, although the extra care lavished on the backing, emphasising the narrative drive of each song, is evident in an increased (though happily not clinical) internal clarification of, and accentuation on, the finer details within (of which they are many). The incorporation of a string section on several songs is carried out with taste and restraint by Donald Grant (notably so on standout tracks The Outlandish Knight and The Bonnie Bairns), and some chuckling, rollicking banjo work from guests Ron Block and Leon Hunt adds both drive and character to The Youthful Boy and Three Jolly Fishermen respectively. It could be argued that Martin Said (aka Who's The Fool Now) is no more than a crowd-friendly, jaunty filler, but it has its place, along with Three Jolly Fishermen (and for that matter The Magic Penny), as a pleasing enough interlude in the programme. Kate's hands-on approach (she co-produced the album with Damien) involves much more than stamping her personal interpretation on the songs, for she's also skilled in drawing other talented players from a common pool to achieve this - here, John Doyle and Steven Iveson (electric guitars), Mike McGoldrick (flutes and whistles), Duncan Lyall (double bass), Steven Byrnes (bouzouki), Julian Sutton & Nick Cooke (diatonic accordions), among others, add further delectable colourings to the mix.

With Ghost, Kate has triumphed in giving us another fine album, one that consolidates her interpretive versatility on a telling sequence of songs that (as ever) is both persuasively delivered and beautifully recorded.

David Kidman