0048248311922. Pre-Owned: Good condition. CD. June Tabor opens her latest album with a bang delivering what may be the final definitive version of Richard Thompson s The Great Valerio -- perhaps the first performance to rival Linda Thompson s. Though it is marred slightly by her longstanding tendency to get all clenched and growly at predictable points in the narrative ( He Fades Away and No Man s Land from her earlier albums) that bone-chilling hymn of disillusionment has never had a more affecting delivery than this one. From there she moves into the gentle and heartbreaking traditional ballad I Wonder Where My True Love Is Tonight and she s off and running through a minefield of emotion from the draining Holocaust song Di Nakht to such folkier fare as The Fiddler and Go from My Window. Tabor s accompaniment is worth noting. In recent years it has become much artier focusing more on piano and winds than on fiddle and guitar. And at times the art-song approach sounds overdone -- No Good at Love sounds jarringly like secondhand Kurt Weill. But it can also work well as on the delicate Go from My Window. April Morning in which she sings O if I had but my own heart back again/Safe in my bosom I would lock it up forever is accompanied by nothing more than a little piano and a dab of viola leaving her sturdy dark voice to run the whole show. It s a marvelous moment one of many on this nearly stunning record. ~ Rick Anderson Rovi