Spinning Yarns

She's had seven years as the lead singer and flautist with Cape Breton traditional group The Outside Track, and a career that has taken her to Limerick in Ireland and back. Now the Vancouver-born Rendell delivers abeautiful and decorous debut album of traditional songs, collected from Canadian and US singers of Scottish, Irish and English descent in the early part of the 20th century. The bulk come from the Newfoundland, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia regions of eastern Canada, with their strong Scottish and Irish traditional music scenes. Of particular importance to them is the singer Angelo Dornan, whose singing gave collector Helen Creighton 135 songs in 1954: some of them were issued on albums on the Smithsonian Folkways label. There are also a couple of songs here from just south of the border in Wisconsin, bringing to mind the wild open spaces and lumber trade of the interior.

Rendell's voice and flute and whistle solos are accompanied by a five-strong band offering guitar, mandola, harp, bass and bouzouki. There is a plaintive formality, which is played with care and feeling, and the liner notes offer a glimpse into each track's history. These renditions do feel a little removed from the grit of the originals, but it is nonetheless a fine work of preservation.