Alasdair Roberts

Alasdair Roberts works as a vocalist and songwriter whose creations spring from the folk heritage of Scotland, his homeland. Even while preserving the core character of that tradition, he shows openness to partnerships with indie rock musicians and with players who treat folk forms as a foundation for further exploration. He first gained recognition through the rural folk outfit Appendix Out before issuing his initial recordings under his own name via 2001’s The Crook of My Arm. Those pieces conjured the atmosphere of earlier eras, whether he performed alone with acoustic guitar on 2015’s Alasdair Roberts, joined forces with fellow singers on 2012’s Urstan alongside Mairi Morrison, or enlisted the adaptable Norwegian folk group Völvur for 2021’s The Old Fabled River.

Roberts’s path from casual recording to an international career began when a demo by Appendix Out reached American nouveau folkie Will Oldham. Oldham felt a kinship with the band’s blend of older and newer sounds and therefore put out their debut 7", “Ice Age” b/w “Pissed with You,” on his Palace Records imprint in 1996. That connection prompted a string of split 7" releases, including ones shared with Songs: Ohia and Policecat, and also secured Roberts a deal with the respected Chicago indie imprint Drag City.

Once Appendix Out delivered its third Drag City album in February 2001, Roberts promptly cut and issued his debut solo set, The Crook of My Arm, on Secretly Canadian. While Appendix Out material had long nodded to figures such as Alex Campbell and Shirley Collins, The Crook of My Arm focused squarely on those sources through twelve spare traditional songs supported solely by Roberts’s acoustic guitar. Later that same year he joined Oldham and Songs: Ohia songwriter Jason Molina in the side project Amalgamated Sons of Rest, with each participant contributing and performing on the others’ compositions. In 2002 Roberts briefly revisited Appendix Out for the EP A Warm and Yeasty Corner, a selection of covers that juxtaposed tributes such as Vashti Bunyan’s “Window Over the Bay” with the Magnetic Fields’ “Josephine.”

A year afterward Roberts released his second solo album, Farewell Sorrow, which earned wider praise and revealed growth in his own songwriting while extending the branches of British and Scottish folk traditions. The austere and striking No Earthly Man followed in 2005, then the fuller-band Amber Gatherers appeared in 2007. Two archival releases, the LP Spoils and the EP Wyrd Meme, surfaced in 2009, and Too Long in This Condition arrived the next year. Roberts next partnered with singer, actress, and playwright Mairi Morrison on Urstan, a 2012 collection that split its focus between traditional Gaelic songs and original pieces. His second album credited to Alasdair Roberts & Friends, the self-written full-band effort A Wonder Working Stone, came out in January 2013; later that year he joined poet Robin Robertson for Hirta Songs, an examination of the St. Kilda islands. His eighth solo album proper, a reflective self-titled set that echoed the minimalism of his first, appeared in 2015. Two years later Pangs, his ninth, saw him pick up the electric guitar again and form a power trio with longtime associates Alex Neilson and Stevie Jones. The ambitious 2018 release What News united Roberts with classical keyboardist David McGuinness and experimental electronic artist Amble Skuse; the three reimagined ancient ballads using both period and contemporary instruments. Roberts pursued a comparable path on 2019’s The Fiery Margin, where he and his band shifted between poised restraint and playful dissonance. For his subsequent undertaking he was contacted by Norwegian fiddler Hans Kjorstad, whose ensemble Völvur combined folk roots with jazz and experimental leanings. That approach aligned closely with Roberts’s own, resulting in their joint recording The Old Fabled River in 2021.