JAMES YORKSTON - The Great White Sea Eagle

For this new album alongside the Second Hand Orchestra, the Scottish musician has changed his approach to songwriting, replacing guitar - his primary tool until now - with piano. This choice has steered the songs toward more intimate tones and greater harmonic versatility, and at that point, the need for a female vocal counterpart felt almost natural (a role perfectly filled by Nina Persson, the singer known to audiences for her time in the Cardigans).

“The Great White Sea Eagle” is a decidedly more choral album, and the Second Hand Orchestra's contribution to the writing and arrangements is evident (many tracks were worked out directly in the studio). The result is a James Yorkston who has never sounded so playful – the beguiling folk-pop of “Hold Out For Love” – or so sentimental – the enchanting duet “Mary” – a track so rich with emotion it practically begs for the repeat button.

As always, stories of everyday life take the lion's share of the lyrics. Tales of adolescence (“Sam And Jeannie McGreagor”) and adulthood (the descriptive, solemn title track) alternate within the circle of life that Yorkston has always narrated with such delicate poetry. But when the author pays tribute to Scott Hutchison of Frightened Rabbit, a decidedly more elegiac, mournful tone emerges, taking hold of the album's most melancholy song, “A Sweetness In You”, followed by the equally anguished “A Forestful Of Rogues”, where the harrowing sound of the violin takes center stage.

I suspect, however, that despite the consistently remarkable caliber of the writing and arrangements, this new album by James Yorkston with the Second Hand Orchestra and Nina Persson will raise a few eyebrows among fans of the Scottish musician, few of whom are inclined toward a more defined song format or the two-voice dialogue that some might find twee.

Any doubt is swept away by the splendid “Hamony”: Nina and James recount, with tender nostalgia, the fraying of feelings without excess or needless pining. Once again, comfort and understanding prevail over impulse and passion.