Alasdair Roberts: Pangs review – folk that rocks

(Drag City)One never knows what’s going to arrive from the prolific Scots singer; bleak antique balladry, self-penned songs, austere acoustics or, as here, a full band that combines cello, fiddle and flute with bass, drums and flashes of electric guitar. Roberts’s elaborate writing style – winding melodies, dense imagery, internal rhymes – means it’s folk that rocks rather than “folk rock”, though the group storm through The Angry Laughing God and The Do