Undersong

In the wild waters of the straits between the isles of Harris and North Uist in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland lies Berneray. It's a distant, elemental spot, in which you’ll find an old, restored Telford church. This was the venue for Scottish trio Salt House's follow-up to their 2013 debut, Lay Your Dark Low. It is a collection as rooted as that Telford church, with all the unseen, intuitive connections that the album's title suggests.

Multi-instrumentalist Ewan MacPherson and fiddle and viola player Lauren MacColl are joined by new band member Jenny Sturgeon on harmonium, guitar and vocals. The music is all original, as are over half the lyrics; a confident mix that tells its own stories of place and meaning within the context of the folk tradition. The musicianship is delicate yet finely wrought and the additional lyrics work well, comprising a ballad from the Scots Kist o Riches archive, folk songs from Dorset and Scandinavia, and poet Robert Frost's 1916 classic, ‘The Road Not Taken’. This last is a beautiful rendering of a very well-known poem, one delivered with such atmosphere that you feel Frost himself would surely have been moved.