Blowin' Indie Wind Roberts Cradles Scottish Traditions in Second Solo Album

Author: Erika Mercer

Picture the rural landscape of the Scottish Highlands - rolling green hills spotted with purple and gold wildflowers. White and gray rocks poking from mounds of dewy grass.
Hidden glens enclosed by dense, misty fogs. Billowing clouds casting spotted shadows in the valleys. Tiny houses with faded red roofs leaning into the soft hillsides.
Through his folk songs, Glasgow native Alasdair Roberts takes his listener through a tour of this very Scottish landscape. Along the way, he points to isolated houses, telling tales of each home's inhabitants - mournful tales of painful loss, unrequited love, desperate passion and lingering hardships.
He shows that these tales are not new, but have been passed from generation to generation, a long tradition of the handing down of sorrow. Since his beginnings as a musician, Roberts has embraced his Scottish heritage.
Previous to releasing his two solo albums, Roberts became known as the vocalist in his band, Appendix Out, with which he recorded three albums, "The Rye Bears A Poison" in 1997, "Daylight Saving" in 1999 and "Night Is Advancing" in 2001.
Additionally, Roberts collaborated with the band, Songs: Ohia, making appearances on several of their albums. Roberts' first solo release, "The Crook of My Arm," debuted in April 2003 on Secretly Canadian, marking his departure from Appendix Out.
Drawing on traditional English, Scottish and Irish ballads, Roberts innovatively interpreted and adapted their melodies and lyrics to appeal to a modern, indie-rock audience. While still respectfully preserving much of the pure beauty of the traditional folk compositions, he transported the songs to the present day, proving the timelessness of the ballads and their dark, sad themes.
"The Crook of My Arm" presented songs that were, as one critic termed it, "rooted in the past, but alive in the present."
"Farewell Sorrow," Roberts' second and most recent solo album, released in April 2003 on Drag City (Caroline), continues the tour through the Scottish landscape and folk songs begun in "The Crook of My Arm." While he does not make as direct use of the traditional ballads, he still borrows melodies and lyrics, evoking the same heritage of music and culture.
Despite that some critics have attacked Roberts for twisting traditional songs to fit a modern audience, and others have scorned his use of outdated song material, Roberts holds fast to his music.
He explains this catch-22: "Such tactics are, of course, likely to infuriate certain sections of the 'traditional music' orthodoxy.
"On the other hand, underground rock music (a genre to which this record may or may not belong) places such a premium on the notion of artistic 'originality' and 'innovation' that many fans might dismiss the relevance of playing this supposedly long-dead music."
He provides an answer by stating, "I would liken the subtle re- or de-formation of the songs in individual performances to the way years of footsteps gradually and imperceptibly wear down and remold a staircase."
His reinterpretations of the time-honored ballads are not strained or corruptive, rather they stand for the natural progression of such music - of the stairs getting gradually worn down and reshaped.
In addition, Roberts' proves that his songs are not antiquated, but timeless. They simply "remold" the traditional to fit to modern listeners.
Through soft, minimal guitar picking and sparse back-up instrumentation (performed by Tom Crossley, Gareth Eggie, Bill Lowman and Rian Murphy), Roberts recreates the simplicity of the age-old songs, bestowing them with an intimate and pensive quality.
His thin, woeful voice compliments the songs further, enhancing their purity and delicacy. His songs remain unadorned, graceful, and understated, paying an homage to the beauty and sadness of the original ballads.
The lyrics, while not the contemporary, lingo-based lines of today's artists, still boast, in Roberts' words, "themes that are age-old, the situations and characters universal, archetypal.
They gain their power from the fact that we have all experienced the beauty and sickness of love; and so each listener breathes his or her own life into the phantoms which populate the songs."
He continues, "Similarly, the performer is charged with the task of reanimating their dark and ancient heart, and in this regard I am greatly indebted to the many fine Scottish, English and Irish singers whose interpretations of the songs inspired my own."
"Farewell Sorrow," with its fusing of past and present, proves to be a fresh and rewarding listen, one abounding with subtle passion and shy but desperate longing.
It gracefully weaves musical simplicity with emotional complexity, creating an album that is as timeless as the music from which it draws.