Mairi Morrison & Alasdair Roberts
Album: Urstan
Label: Drag City
Tracks: 12
Website: http://www.dragcity.com

This intriguing album, and indeed the singing partnership of Mairi and Alasdair, was born out of occasional collaborations between the two contrasted yet complementary artists at Glasgow's Ceòl 's Craic club (a successful new venue devoted to promoting and celebrating Gaelic arts, language and culture). Alasdair, of course, is well known and respected for his own distinctively reserved yet strangely compelling accounts of traditional (mostly Scots) material, whereas Mairi is more of an unknown quantity outside of a circle of aficionados of Gaelic song.

This album's title (Urstan being a Gaelic term from Mairi's native Isle Of Lewis specifically meaning "a baby's head-wetting", i.e. the act of celebrating a new child's birth with a dram of whisky!) is a reflection of its joyful intent, with a consequent headlong immersion in some what are at times triumphantly oddball musical arrangements. The collaborators are clearly having fun creating sparkling and imaginative modern settings for their chosen texts; these range from traditional Gaelic and Scots songs through to a couple of original compositions (Mairi's Leanabh An Òir and Alasdair's The Whole House Is Singing, a different version of the latter having appeared on his 2004 CD Farewell Sorrow) which close the disc.

The overall impact is one of immediacy, of colourful life-affirming activity, an exciting reinvention of tradition; it's amazing, too, how well the two artists' disparate singing voices go together in duet mode, as you'll hear especially on Mairi's closing lullaby. During the course of the album, the variety in mood and texture achieved through limited resources is quite staggering, whether at the service of a gorgeous spiritual song (composed by Margaret Smith of Arnol, Lewis), a or a popular north-eastern ballad (The Laird O' The Drum); or whether conveying gentle humour (Never Wed An Old Man - the most familiar item on the disc by far) or the satirical bent of Fiullaigean (Wee Finlay). It's also hard to resist the sheer ebullience of the St. Kildan song Hion Dail-a Horo Hi or the jazzy, defiant waulking song Mìle Marbhphaisg Air A' Ghaol, and the frenetic tumble of The Tri-Coloured House ingeniously marries textures from the ceilidh and the colliery (fiddles and brass) to the Acre Of Land/Scarborough Fair narrative.

Alasdair and Mairi have fleshed out their own performances with some amazing ensemble musicians, Alastair Caplin (fiddle), Stevie Jones (bass) and Alex Neilson (drums), further inviting various guests from the Glasgow music scene - Mike Hastings, Michael John McCarthy, David McGuinness, Allan MacDonald, Ross MacRae, Peter Nicholson and Richard Merchant. And when you've digested the ample introductory liner note, you can then prise the equally ample booklet out of the digipack to reveal full texts and translations.

Those listeners who habitually seek out the bold and daring in their musical adventures will not be disappointed, and neither will those traditionalists who employ an open mind. An excellent, and most stimulating, release.

David Kidman