Music Arcades: James Yorkston: When the Haar Rolls In

Well, if M.J. thinks No More Shall We Part is slow, wait until he hears this one!

One of my favourite songs on it is Tortoise Regrets Hare. I was 'singing' along to the chorus the other evening while the Boy was having his bedtime bottle. He started patting his head. It took me a while to realise he was patting his hair — much as he pats his cheek when I point out a chick in one of his books. (In similar vein, "bath" refers to any stretch of water from a puddle in the playground to the English Channel at Broadstairs; "door" is any closing of an aperture, from bottle top to large gate.)

"Haar" was a new word to me. Verity Sharp explained what it refers to when she played tracks (1, 2) from it on Late Junction.

I've wanted to like James Yorkston for a long time. I've seen him sharing the bill with many others I rate highly, from Alasdair Roberts at the ICA in 2003 to David Thomas Broughton in 2007. In two consecutive years at the Green Man Festival I stumbled into a tent where I thought James Yorkston was playing, only to be greeted by strobe lights and a band playing motorik space rock: in both cases it turned out it was James Yorkston; he was just stretching the boundaries of his folk tag. Well done him. The trouble was I never found enough in his songs to to want to hear them again. Sometimes this is a sign of subtlety: the longer it takes to get to appreciate the substance of a song, the longer and deeper the a/effect. But how long do you give yourself to acquire an acquired taste before you give up?

Fortunately the impact of the new JY songs on the radio was immediate. So immediate, in fact, as to cast doubt on their subtlety. So I listened a few times on the then-brand-new Spotify. I kept coming back to the album, added it to my wishlist about a year after those first radio plays, even flirted with the idea of getting the super-deluxe-limited-edition-boxed-set-featuring-10"-vinyl, enticed by the exclusive tracks by Charlotte Greig, David Thomas Broughton, King Creosote, Nancy Elizabeth and Viking Moses. But 40 quid is a lot of money. Just as well I held off, as Lucy gave me the standard issue for Christmas.

I listened a lot over the Christmas and New Year holiday. It's the first four songs that stay strongest in my inner ear, but when I listened again four months on, it's a strong album all the way through. Very, very slow — like life observed from a waterside bar on a weekday afternoon — but strong.

It even inspired me to check out other Yorkston albums on the streaming services, but so far they still refuse to stick.