Album: Jim Moray, Skulk (NIAG)

Jim Moray's filtering of traditional folk music through a mesh of modern sensibilities continues on Skulk, where eight adaptations of old ballads are punctuated by impassioned versions of Anais Mitchell's fretful "If It's True" and Fleetwood Mac's "Big Love".

Elsewhere, though, it's all thwarted love, mythic treachery and benighted tragedy, nowhere more barbarous than in "The Captain's Apprentice". Moray's approaches throughout are typically innovative: the tragic child ballad "Lord Douglas" is here blended with Norse and Danish variants on the same tale, while an a cappella version of "Horkstow Grange" features his own auto-tuned harmonies based on those originally devised for the song by Ralph Vaughan Williams.

DOWNLOAD THIS The Captain's Apprentice; Horkstow Grange; Big Love; The Golden Glove