Spinning Yarns isn't unusual in being an album of traditional music. It is out of the ordinary, however, in taking the effort to unearth songs that haven't been recycled endlessly through decades of urban "folk" performances. Its dozen tracks are either striking variants or obscurities sufficient to feel like thrilling discoveries. In other words, Norah Rendell brings something fresh to the repertoire.

She and her husband, guitarist Brian Miller, actively researched songs collected from Irish, English and Scottish immigrants to Canada, which is to say they returned to traditional music's sources as opposed to going the usual route: picking and choosing from the well-thumbed revival songbook. Thus, I recognized only two or three titles. I was especially pleased to hear the rarely recorded "The Carrion Crow," awash in mysterious images and enigmatic allusions, possessed of a grand old chorus: Sing hey, sing ho, the old carrion crow/ Fol the riddle, rol the riddle, hey ding oh.

Make no mistake: though not avant-garde arrangements, they are modern ones, done in band settings with an assortment of stringed and woodwind instruments. There is no attempt to make these songs sound as they did in their original iteration, as rough-edged, typically unaccompanied vocals, but they don't need to be. Rendell, who sings in a trained tenor characteristic of many modern folk singers, and her accompanists stay true to the stories and the emotions. Along with regulars Randy Gosa (guitar and mandola) and Ailie Robertson (harp), two outstanding Twin Cities musicians, Daithi Sproule (guitarist for Altan) and Adam Kiesling, join on a cut each. Besides singing, Rendell plays flute, whistles and harmonium. Miller contributes well-written, informative liner notes detailing the songs' histories and the original singers' biographies.

As the title implies, most of the songs are ballads, many coming out of the sailing and lumber industries. "Lost Jimmie Whalen" and "The Pinery Boy," from the latter, were favorites during the 1960s folk boom, though they were rarely done as interestingly as they are here. "The Sailor's Bride" opens with a couplet recognizable to those versed in what must be Canada's most famous traditional song, "Farewell to Nova Scotia" (not to be found on the current album): The sun was setting in the west/ All nature had retired to rest, though the remainder of the ballad, about a woman's grief for her drowned, lately wed seafaring husband, carries the narrative elsewhere.

At once ambitious and unpretentious, Spinning Yarns resurrects forgotten old songs and places them into our own ears, hearts and memories, where they should be more than welcome.