No Easy Way

No Easy Way is a musical oddity: dry, pseudo-Appalachian folk songs, performed as if the mountain folk had grown up in England and vacationed in both Morocco (as suggested by the droning, Middle Eastern-inflected vocals) and Jamaica (the reggae dub rhythms). Even odder, the whole mess works, thanks to The Fellow Traveller’s lead singer Lorraine Morley’s lovely, mesmerizing voice and the spare, fiddle-driven arrangements. If the Cowboy Junkies had a pulse, they might sound like this. B+