Tracks 8, 9 and 11 on Jeelie Jars 'n' Coalie Backies are, by themselves, worth the cost of buying the album. The rest of the music by Alex Hodgson you get for free -- and, coming from this Scottish performer on the Scottish label Greentrax, that's not to be sneezed at.

I will admit that I do not have a clue what the title means. A number of the tracks are also sung in the Scots dialect, but the sheer enthusiasm of the performer glosses over any lack of understanding of specific words.

The album opens in almost skiffle or rock 'n' roll mode with the lively take on the traditional song, "Willie's Gon' Tae Melville Castle." Hodgson next slows the pace for a lovely love song to his wife, "Isobelle." I can but hope that "Mercat Fair Lass" never gets mixed up in a mad ad campaign on UK television about meerkats. This is a lovely song written by Hodgson and performed with great feeling.

"The Fisherow Belles" is one of the songs with words beyond our ken, but it again tells a wonderful tale of the women who made the fishing industry possible but are all too often forgotten. I particularly liked the tune.

I am haunted even as I write by the track "The Shearin." The tune is familiar from another song that I cannot place. The shearing in the song refers to corn harvesting rather than taking wool from sheep. It is a sad song about one of the women who traditionally does such work being no longer able to do it. In fact, this one track might justify the cost of this whole CD by itself.

Hodgson follows this with a beautiful rendition of "Jock o' Hazeldean," a song that has featured on so many albums but is seldom better than here with this beautifully paced version. He closes with another personal song from his own pen about his parents that reminds the listener so much of times past when couples went out dancing or the "the scratcher," as the cinema was called not just in Scotland.

This is an excellent album with copious liner notes and some lovely photographs to complement the music.