Album review: Alasdair Roberts & Friends, A Wonder Working Stone (Drag City)

With A Wonder Working Stone, Alasdair Roberts continues to blur the borders between ancient and modern, between heady myth and harsh reality, and between folk and whatever sounds right in context – from the New Orleans funeral dirge incorporated into "Scandal and Trance", to the Caledonian blues of "Fusion of Horizons".

"The Wheels of the World" is a multi-sectioned yoking of spiritualist fable to antique chant that recalls The Incredible String Band; and "Song Composed in December" a curious alliance of bluebell polka and Gaelic rap.

Download: The Wheels of the World; Song Composed in December; The Merry Wake