Pitchfork

Pull out your old copy of Norton's Anthology. Here on their second album, the Memory Band-- once the brainchild of Stephen Cracknell of English folk-electronica outfit Gorodischj, now a fully collaborative unit-- draw from traditional British folk dating back more than a century. One song, here titled "I Wish I Wish", derives from a ballad collected by John Clare in the early 1800s (you might know it from Uncle Tupelo's "I Wish My Baby Was Born").

The album is not, however, the backwards-looking, academic exercise that such a description might imply; wisely, the band modernizes these influences, often in unexpected ways. There are covers of songs by Ronnie Lane ("The Poacher"), Rotary Connection ("Want You to Know"), and Carly Simon ("Why") among these old tunes, as well as a sly nod to Led Zeppelin on the opener "Blackwaterside". Plus, Rhys Morgan introduces programmed beats that are so well integrated into the music that you barely even notice the synthetic encroaching on the organic. Cracknell envisions the Memory Band in the tradition of folk supergroups of the 1960s and 70s, and he has certainly corralled an impressive line-up for Apron Strings, including Adem and members of Hot Chip and Simian.

As befits an album drawing from traditional ballads, Apron Strings is full of songs about good love and bad; it is neither idyllic nor pastoral-- an overused adjective as regards folk music-- but ambivalently bucolic. Featuring backing vocals from Adem, "Come Write Me Down" sounds like an invocation to the muse, asking for inspiration via romance, and "Want You to Know" repeats its declaration like a mantra: "Want you to know you make me happy/ Want you to know you make me smile." That song, dating far back into the 1970s, sounds perfectly at home alongside "Green Grows the Laurel", as do Cracknell's own compositions like "Evil".

Among these breezy odes to devotion and companionship, however, are darker songs in which love has curdled and hearts have hardened: as Nancy Wallace sings on "Why", "Why does your love hurt so much?" The traditional "I Wish I Wish" finds Wallace lamenting both her pregnancy and her husband's abandonment. As she wishes away her disgrace-- "But a maid again I never shall be/ Until apples grows on that orange tree"-- Jennymay Logan's fiddle solo daydreams the narrator out of her sad predicament, if only for a few fleeting moments.

Interspersed between gentle, occasionally lulling instrumentals like "Reasons" and "The Light" (featuring Hot Chip's Al Doyle), these love songs manage to plumb extreme emotions-- exquisite happiness and desperate dejection-- while presenting them as different sides to the same shilling. Musically, the same sounds and tones are used to express very different situations. The gentle guitar strums and violin bows on "Come Write Me Down" portray a hopeful anticipation, while those same instruments spell damning unhappiness on "Green Grows the Laurel". As a result, Apron Strings sounds as warm and familiar as an old quilt. The Memory Band may not be the supergroup Cracknell intended, but Apron Strings capably captures the joy of collaboration.