West of Roan is a duo of Annie Schermer and Channing Showalter, two visual and performing artists, who share a love of old folk and myth, close harmonies, shifting drone and puppets. Though grounded in old, ancestral traditions—Celtic and Norse mythology, unadorned singing and the plangent tones of fiddle—the pair have resolutely avoided folk purism. “We’re pretty careful about performing traditional music,” Showalter explains.“ We think it through and we think about what we want to say about the song that we’re singing that’s not ours, and if we don’t feel like we really have much to say about it, we don’t always choose to sing it.”