Thursday 18 September 2008

When the Haar Rolls In

I'm a great devotee of Radio 3's excellent Late Junction - a wondrous house of many windows. Visit every Tues, Weds and Thurs at 11.15 pm and you will glimpse whole vistas of music beyond your normally visible horizons. Well, that's what it does for me, anyway. I kick myself when I miss it. (Luckily, it's available for listening again on the BBC website, but its late-night timing is part of its pleasure in my view - it just doesn't feel quite right listening in the middle of the day.)

It was on Late Juction three or four years ago that James Yorkston first slid into my semi-consciousness and there he has stayed. I find his unique voice induces a hypnotic kind of hazy, autumnal feeling. So the timing of his new CD, When the Haar Rolls In, released earlier this month, was perfect. As with his other albums, it hasn't taken many listenings for it to get right under the skin.


I really can't better this perceptive review of the album by Robert Crossan, which sums up When the Haar Rolls In quite perfectly.

There's an inexplicable dearth of decent Yorkston clips on YouTube. I posted one here a while ago. There's nothing from Haar yet. This has quite a different sound from the new album, but is nice: The Hills and the Heath:





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