Roger Dean Young & the Tin Cup

Roger Dean Young - a country boy with a traveller's bent and a sack of poetry lifted from the ghosts of Whitman and Du Fu. Raised on the Canadian Prairies, Young lists horses, trumpets and lilacs as a few of his favorite things. Tired of the in-your-face mode of these modern times he would rather step up behind your back and mutter a few things in your ear.

The Tin Cup - an easy-going collective of accomplished musicians slipping out of their chosen disciplines to give voice to Young's country-folk songs. As such, Appalachian old-time, Latin-jazz, Arabian and Western classical players all don the flannel and subtly inform the simple tunes and evocative musings found on this, Young's third album Casa. They learn here not to create world music but to recognize the 21st century cross-pollination that all but the most died-in-the-wool purist are subject to. If the instrumental voices flushing out the images have an accent you can't pin down, so be it - this is Vancouver where everyone is from somewhere else.

Casa - an album of alt-folk musings that wander from home, down the street, across pastures and playgrounds, ending in a Mexican pawnshop. Or, that's where it begins. A certain yearning permeates, best realized by the wandering eye sung of in the track Wanderlust. As comfortable name checking Bentley, Alberta as Vienna, the songs at once feel local yet universal. Hope is a theme; making the best of a peasant's lot with a nose inclined to the winds of chance.