Distant Future

Heidi Talbot will be familiar to American fans of Celtic music as the featured vocalist with Cherish the Ladies. For her solo debut, she collaborated with guitarist and producer John Doyle (formerly of Solas, and a solo artist in his own right) to create a captivating program of quiet, slow to midtempo songs both ancient and modern, all of them set to tastefully minimal arrangements and accompanied by a shifting array of players who include multi-instrumentalist Dirk Powell, percussionist Shane O'Sullivan, violinist Dana Lynn, and Doyle himself. The traditional numbers on this album are uniformly excellent: Talbot brings a wonderful, sweet vulnerability to "High Germany" and "Jealousy," and her double-tracked voice on the almost unaccompanied "MacCrimmon's Lament" is eerily gorgeous. Her renditions of Doyle's and O'Sullivan's compositions are also very fine, particularly her graceful accounts of the melodically complex "In Silence I Go" and the lilting "Said to Me Sweetly." The two Boo Hewerdine songs aren't possessed by quite the same magic; "Geography" sounds miscast as minimalist folk music, though the piano/guitar/voice arrangement of "Muddy Water" works quite well. Very highly recommended overall.