The Crook Of My Arm

The music Alasdair Roberts made in his youth, in his band Appendix Out, was curiously positioned between the lo-fi, indie rock community he was part of — both in his hometown of Glasgow, and internationally, through his connections with Will Oldham and Jason Molina — and his family’s historical involvement with traditional song (Roberts’s father was a folk guitarist and promoter). The Crook of My Arm was his first break with his immediate past, consisting of a collection of folk songs performed alone, just voice and guitar, and recorded direct to mini-disc. Even at this early stage, Roberts is a preternatural interpreter of these ageless songs, able both to sustain intensity of performance through an epic like “As I Came By Huntly Town,” and to grasp the miniaturised intimacies of a melody like “Ploughboy Lads.”