Too awkward to end up in a mobile phone advert, but too good to go unnoticed, Trembling Bells have made something unique with Carbeth.

Alex Neilson, a Scottish drummer/musician/clever sort (who has played with Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy and Alasdair Roberts) has pulled together a band to play a tripped-out folk music which is more 2009 than the 1964 you’d assume if you heard it down the hall. I’d have to know a hell of a lot more about British folk music and the continuums of that world than I do to tell you who they sound like without cheating and reading their Myspace page.

Songs start off sounding like a tumbledown mess, find their own logic then fall back apart again. The band play broken-up and unobtrusive, or big, brazen, rolling and tumbling. Lavinia Blackwell’s effortless folk-queen singing reaching up for the highest points of the odd world Trembling Bells inhabit. Neilson and Blackwell share the leads pretty evenly, his scratchy, Will Oldham at his wildest vocals spitting out any number of intriguing lines and melodies. When Blackwell sings Neilson’s bawdy lines like “I was knuckle deep in love with you”; “She was writing a prescription on a rizla for my king-sized mistake” it catches you off-guard, but like everything else on this record, makes its own perfect sense.

Carbeth might be a few people’s favourite folky thing this year. It might tumble into nowhere. Or it might be a big deal. But it won’t end up on a mobile phone advert, and it could well make your day a fair bit better.