Young Scotsman Alasdair Roberts is an old hand at songcraft -- and not just his own, but the songs of the ancients, the near-ancients and their friends. Over the past decade that he's been singing music in his own name (after graduating from the Appendix Out youth brigade), he's made a habit out of recording songs of his own and traditional songs with an equal amount of investment and urgency. After all, it's all music, always deserving of everything we have to give. Following 2009's deluge of fantastic syncretic epics (as documented on Spoils and The Wyrd Meme EP), Too Long In This Condition stands at the deep well of traditional songs, ready to plunge the murky depths at any moment. It's the third such album in Alasdair's career: back in 2001, he recorded his first set of traditionals as a solo act and then in 2005, he made No Earthly Man with production from Bonnie Will Oldham. As ever before, grave robber Roberts circles the elders warily, with suspicion, fascination and adoration. His renditions are based upon multiple versions that he has heard sung and then sung himself. After all this steeling of the self, these auld song stories are reanimated here in raptly personal versions -- no slavish renditions these! Instead, new life and color pours from the speakers, with each song playing out in a way that Alasdair and his friends felt best about. The friends! To realize his new antique approach, Ali channeled the talents of an international cartel of musicians, including Edinburgh fiddler/violinist Alastair Caplin, Canadian cellist Christine Hanson, UK singer/concertina player Emily Portman, Scottish piper Donald Lindsay, Glasgow's own Shane Connolly (drums an' percussion), Ben Reynolds (lap steel) and Tom Crossley (allsorts), plus Ozark harpist Bill Lowman of Oklahoma USA. Together they rock and reel, with voices raised in harmony and hands and feet stomping the beat, unfurling a range of moods that comprise the endless songs of life. Too Long In This Condition? Not by half! We're betting that in another thousand years, the sky-creatures that inherit our burnt orb'll be taking Alasdair's versions and singing them in their own throatless style, seeking to crack the codes and unravel the mystery of man. Raise your glass to human tradition -- it's a beautiful and horrible thing.
