Album: Jim Moray, In Modern History (NIAG)

Moray's elision of folk and pop is self-conscious but increasingly confident, as if the further he gets from the source, the more he enjoys riding the river of song.

This is his fourth shot at big-time appeal and the most coherent. Drums are all over it like logs in a torrent, and if there are no great variations in temperature and tempo, that ought to be compensated for by the sheer musicality of the arrangements, which accomodate both the tropes of pub folk and, in "William Taylor", Zep's "Kashmir". Pretty wonderful.