Following up the gentle, woozy ramble through the fishing ports and tavern trails around Edinburgh that was 2006’s, ‘The Year of The Leopard’, the athletic James Yorkston returns with yet another album, ‘Roaring The Gospel’. And whilst not ‘roaring’ exactly (more ‘yawning’) it is significantly more playful and dissolute than it’s perfectly balanced predecessor, packed to it’s fusty wooden rafters with all manner of tales regaled in his usual unsteady drawl to the languorous hum of his jugband army of banjo-plucking, percussion swapping, harmonium honking angels. And if anything, Yorkston is cranking up the pressure on his bevvy of influences: Beck’s ‘Sea Change’ and Mutations’ albums, John Martyn, Madagascan guitarist D’Gary and folk singer Anne Briggs.
And again, it’s utterly charming, the fidgety drums and piano of the jaunty ‘A Man With My Skills’ recalling the bright prodigious innocence and swagger of Gough’s ‘Hour Of The Bewilderbeast’.
Born in Kirkcaldy and brought up in Kingsbarns, Fife, Yorkston now lives in Edinburgh. Some folks might remember him as sometime member of the Fence Collective, having worked with members of the group both live and on record.