Eddi Reader got “spooked” by Robert Burns one January night singing “My Love’s Like A Red Red Rose” to a bunch of drunks in a Glasgow bar. The experience sent her off in search of Scotland’s national bard, and the result is an album of 11 enticing arrangements of his 200-year-old lyrics, among which “Red Red Rose” and “Auld Lang Syne” will be familiar, but most will not. The accompaniment by leading Scottish folk musicians and the Royal National Scottish Orchestra is sympathetic, and Reader’s lovely vocals render Burns’ words far more comprehensible than on the page.
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