The second album from Glasgow-based Barluath finds their now six-piece line-up established and playing with confidence from steady road work, creating an instrumental powerhouse on the uptempo tunes and lending both enthusiastically energetic and sensitive vocal and instrumental accompaniments to Ainsley Hamill's singing in Gaelic and English.

Hamill features in nine of the eleven tracks, drawing songs from sources including Irish-American partnership John Doyle and Cathie Ryan (Liberty's Sweet Shore) and Skye-based maestro Blair Douglas (modern Gaelic hymn Solus M'aigh/Light Of Hope). She enunciates clearly and is technically precise but her very schooled approach here, with heavy vibrato, can sometimes get in the way of the stories and emotions these songs convey. The occasional use of celeste and clarinet alongside pipes, whistles, fiddle, guitar, bouzouki, harmonium and piano adds some nice touches to the arrangements, and while overall it represents a work of consolidation rather than rampant progress, there are signs that the best is still to come from a relatively young band.

Rob Adams