Well, this is something.

Not something never heard in any form heretofore -- one thinks of a few artists and bands of the folk-baroque school from the middle-period British/Irish revival (late 1960s to early 1980s) -- but nothing quite like this, which amounts to a liminal sound that fuses tradition and innovation, at once mystical and earthly. Sitting atop all this are the celestial voices and harmonies of two youngish women from Halifax, Nova Scotia, in the good nation of Canada, America's treasured once and future friend.

Amy Keeler and Lisa Maria, who joined forces more than a decade ago to tour and record, have fashioned a wholistic North American music out of elements of the English, Scottish and Irish diaspora without dipping into any of its actual songs, tunes and ballads. They have chosen instead to populate the landscape with their sonic ghosts, conjured up out of history's thin air and the imaginations of those who once lived to bequeath us with a legacy to carry on, if we choose to remember it or to put ourselves in peril if we don't.

This is the first album of theirs to land in my hands and eardrums, so I can't claim that they have never covered an authentic folk song in a past recording. In fact, I'd be surprised if they hadn't. Though I would very much have liked to hear one or more here, Reunion stands on its own legs without them. Their spiritual representatives are omnipresent.

A small chamber-like group backs and surrounds the two vocalists. The players give voice to an intuitive understanding of how old music most affectingly intersects with new, and what the temperature should be when that occurs (chilly). If you know your English revivalists, moreover, you'll catch snatches of the inspiration in Shirley & Dolly Collins's classic Anthems in Eden (1969) and, less often, in the late Bert Jansch's quite specific guitar style, quoted in winking tribute in the intro to one of the tracks. Mama's Broke takes care to keep the accompaniment unsuffocatingly spare but crisply sophisticated. The passing of time, beautifully and disorientingly conveyed in harmonies and fiddle in particular, is given voice in notes that feel covered in the rust of centuries. As you're listening, you may forget to exhale your next breath.

Reunion also is in service to a gloomy, nourish sensibility. Just about every story appears to play out in the darkness of a disintegrating world where scattered memories are all that remain of past lives and events. Maybe the actual world in which the old ballads were sung felt like that, too. Maybe the idea of Reunion is that the things that once held us together feel as if fading into a vanishing past where ballads reminded us of the humanity that we shared, however uneasily.

In any event, this will be among the most thrilling albums you'll hear in 2026.