The Hebden Bridge singer-songwriter - equally adept at turning his hand to traditional folk material, as his two most recent single CDs and two excellent cuts on the new set prove - already has an international reputation and Ziggurat (Hubris Records) more than lives up to it.

Steve spent much of last year promoting the prestigious Reaching Back box set, a five-CD summary of his 40-year career, but 2008 has seen him push forward again.

Those familiar with the Tilston back catalogue will recognise the sheer range of subject his work covers and lyrically the variety is what makes his records such a pleasure to listen to as the political rubs shoulders with the personal and the past with the present.

Tilston is an excellent storyteller and having looked back on his own youth with fond opener The Road When I Was Young, political, personal, past and present come together in a carefully placed couple of tracks.

A Pretty Penny is Steve's critique of who he sees as major villains of the piece we have all come to know as the credit crunch, turning a lyrical line of fire on the City money men.

Nestling next to it in the running order is one of Steve's favourite stories from right here in the Calder Valley.

The King Of The Coiners is one of the album's major pieces and is a wonderful song-story about King David Hartley and the Cragg Vale Coiners.

Steve says A Pretty Penny is about "a modern kind of coiner, dealing in obscene amounts of money."

Although his atmospheric description of the crowds lining the route up to Heptonstall Church for the burial of David Hartley, hanged after trial at York Assizes, indicates some sympathy, it is with reservation.

"Apparently a large crowd lined the whole length of the Buttress to pay their respects. I'm not making a case for him being Robin Hood, but somebody obviously liked him. It's a great story," he says.

Wider political matters see western Governments under fire over the Iraq War on The Spoils Of War, the album's second major piece. The album takes its title from it, a Ziggurat being one of the country's ancient structures from the days when Mesopotamia was the cradle of civilisation.

For evocation, the Pennine weather informs the beautiful After Summer Rain; Steve's family heritage takes centre stage in In Between Years; and The Devil May Care is a touching tune written for a lost friend, musing on the possibility of their paths crossing one last time in the future.

The folk tunes are perfectly integrated into the album's sound, The Fisher Lad of Whitby, a tale of press-gangs on the Yorkshire coast in times past, sounding superb despite the traditional lyric being penned for a female singer.