Sam Amidon – Bright Sunny South

A folk singer cast from an old-fashioned mould, Sam Amidon rearranges and repurposes songs from the ages, his albums to date principally reinterpreting hymns and trad folk standards – plus, often, a cover version of lesser vintage, with Tears for Fears and R Kelly gracing past releases, and Bright Sunny South offering up an incongruously reworked Mariah Carey number.

But while his sources are venerably second-hand, the selected songs are reborn in novel shapes, with jazz inflections and instrumentation beyond the banjo-fiddle-acoustic genre hub. That’s not to say the fruits of Amidon’s latest labours will curry broad favour, with Bright Sunny South likely to play best to those already partial to roots re-visitations, or existing fans of the Vermont artist’s work. But then again, Amidon’s hardly shooting for mainstream adoration, with the aforementioned Carey cut less an aspirational point-of-reference, more an impressive (and successful) attempt to find depth where it’s least expected. [Chris Buckle]