Abyssinians

June Tabor is one of the finest folk singers alive. Not only is she completely in command of a vast repertoire of traditional British and Irish songs, but she has also shown herself able to move completely out of that repertoire (into, for example, Yiddish and Civil War songs) without any loss of authority. Not everything she does succeeds entirely, but there are singers who would kill to be able to do at their best what she does when she's just phoning it in. That said, Abyssinians is not her best album. Although it starts off strong with the almost a cappella "Month of January," things quickly bog down: where "The Month of January" is gorgeous and depressing, "The Scarecrow" is merely depressing. And is that glass harmonica in the background? Good grief. (The lack of musician credits on the CD is an irritant.) "A Smiling Shore" is the heartbreakingly effective tale of a Holocaust survivor; "Lay This Body Down" is a Civil War-era spiritual which she delivers in a surprisingly effective voice. Most of the rest is mediocre for her, but again, that's not even close to half bad.