(Muso's Guide, November 28, 2008)
Single review
If folk is alive and well, it’s been living in Fife, Scotland and very happy about it, thank you. Except that the quaint Scottish fishing villages grew too small, and lovely talents like King Creosote and this here James Yorkston much too big.
And so, the outside world gets to enjoy the artists formerly known as the Fence Collective - different all, but retaining the similarity of taletelling. These songwriters produce storybook songs with vivid characters, and lives, and loves, all every bit as real as your own.
This is the leader single of Yorkston’s fourth studio record When The Haar Rolls In. In Yorkston’s native East Neuk of Fife (and parts of northeast England), the haar is a damp mist that comes off the sea, concealing, enveloping and contorting reality. So it is that Yorkston’s former life as a local balladeer has melted away, darkened and obscured by the success which has befallen this softly-spoken, intelligent multi-instrumentalist.
‘Tortoise Regrets Hare’ is a sweet, soulful tune, with plenty to recommend it to those who have yet to find themselves bewitched. With all the care and attention of a lover, Yorkston coaxes gentle acoustic rhythms from his guitar, spinning yarns of such simplicity that listeners will be sure that they could have come up with them - except they didn’t, and James Yorkston has been the one to verbalise the dimmest of daydreams lurking just beyond the periphery of the imagination.
The vocals of Nancy Elizabeth offer a rich harmony, and the addition of violin and keyboards flesh out the simple melody into something really very lovely. Repeated listenings will only engender the deepest empathy, as it becomes apparent that there are only frets and regrets over relationships lost, and hearts broken.
Coming late to fame, Yorkston is the tortoise who struggled along. But with this record, he proves he really has won out - and what a victory lap this is.
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