Moray’s modernist treatment of antique folk has sometimes proved wayward, but rarely uninteresting. This sixth album is well judged, treating eight old songs to varied arrangements and adding a brace of originals. No one else would put Fair Margaret and Sweet William, a 400-year- old murder ballad, to a racing, Nymanesque piano part, or make The Foggy Dew (not the Irish song) fit for a Latin ballroom. More conventional are the electric guitars on Edward of the Lowlands and the chamber-pop treatment given William of Barbarycorrect (shades of Ronnie Lane’s The Poacher). Astronomers inspire the originals; The Straight Line and The Curve remembers (somewhat ponderously) Elizabethan mage John Dee, while Sounds of Earth celebrates Ann Druyan and Carl Sagan. Great stories all.
