After a fruitful collaboration with former Screaming Trees singer Mark Lanegan for Ballad of the Broken Seas, former Belle & Sebastian singer Isobel Campbell soldiers on with this even darker collection of eerie folk madrigals. They sound as if they were birthed many centuries ago, such is the hypnotic trance she casts for this mesmerizing fare. Acoustic guitars, scraping cellos and her outright spooky vocals make for compelling listening, not far removed from the psychedelic druid folk of Espers, the most severe ends of the Fairport Convention or a collection of desperate, old time mountain folk. The acapella “Loving Hannah” is a stand-out, but Campbell’s musical economy serves her well throughout, whether it’s the bargain basement Mazzy Star-isms of “Thursday’s Child” or the John Cale cello psycho-sawing of the instrumental “Over the Wheat and the Barley.” Campbell has created an album that provides very little light. It is meant to draw you in like a horror film: ominous, foreboding with the threat of disaster never far off.