January 2013, Drag City Records will release the new album by Alasdair Roberts & Friends, entitled A Wonder Working Stone.  A collection of varied new epics, Alasdair‘s latest is by turns metaphysical, cosmological, phantasmagorical, topical, personal and universal. This is Alasdair’s most ambitious, fully-realized work to date (an extraordinary claim following the incredible excursions made on his recent releases Spoils and Too Long In This Condition).  A Wonder Working Stone continues Alasdair’s long-standing love affair and deeply creative interaction with the traditional music of has native Scotland (and beyond), offering an idiosyncratic and nuanced radicalization of that tradition. Indeed, he questions the very notion of ‘tradition’ in the modern age, with songs addressing topics such as mortality (as ever), life, love, sex, faith and history. There is a meditation on loss – the losing of self, of the music of the nation? – that is belied and ultimately denied by the lively nature of the work.

A Wonder Working Stone Track Listing:
1. The Merry Wake 2. The Year of the Burning 3. Fusion of Horizons 4. The Wheels of the World 5. The End of Breeding
6. Song Composed in December 7. Brother Seed 8. Gave the Green Blessing 9. Scandal and Trance 10. The Laverock in the Blackthorn