“The sound comes rising up out of the silence and opens out into a new place — a space you’ve never quite experienced before. This new album by Whidbey Island’s Timothy Hull, “Brambleland,” unlocks an imaginative world and redefines the intimacy of listening, as wonderful music always does. Here are songs for celebrating the sun, and for the long dark rains of winter, too. Moments of joy are fragile, but made more vivid because each one is overhung with its imminent loss.In “Brambleland,” Hull weaves an old new world with a weft of tradition and a warp of fresh vision. On the one hand, he sings of friends riding the rails, of Appalachian coal hills, of the killing of indigenous tribes and the buffalo herds.On the other hand, he is utterly at home in the contemporary world, with allusions to the ferries, mini-vans, underpasses, and a place called Berlin. There’s a lament for David Chain, the defender of the old-growth that was felled by the felled tree he tried to save.There is the introspective Irish ballad, spun off onto that open road blazed by Walt Whitman, that long lonesome highway pioneered by Woody Guthrie and thousands of unknown balladeers. Here is the folk song, fresh and newly defined for contemporary time and space, yet bringing forward all of its ancient discoveries. Here is a love of language and eloquent phrasing — and a love of the spaces, too — like a path that leads us where e’er this rag-tag rambler will.And make no mistake, “Brambleland” is rambleland, and this music is about “exiles on the wander-roam.” The seeds of these narratives were clearly nursed into life during Hull’s travels. Wandering is the direction here, rambling is the movement. These seem to be songs of a century or two ago, beamed into the present where they assume an astonishing life. But “Brambleland” is also a realm of the imagination, where all these worlds merge to form something new.Musically, “Brambleland” is delightful. Hull’s voice is young; it vibrates with emotion, and the music is clear and close, with a kind of lustre. There’s the undercurrent throughout of solid percussion (David Malony), and there are untold graceful touches: Timothy’s own “toy accordion,” the fiddle of Anthea Lawrence, the mandolin of Zak Borden, the bass guitar of Tom Hoeflich, the keyboard work of Rick Ingrasci, and the harmonies of Kathy Dean, Casey Neill, and Derek Parrott.Although its vocabulary is broad and imaginative, the experience of “Brambleland” is essentially autobiographical. These are the songs of a young man, and also of a place. The final song listed on the lyric sheet (there’s a surprise or two waiting on the disk), “Wind in the Chimney.” is a wonderful example, oozing Northwest seasons and images.In the opening song, “Rag-Tag,” Timothy Hull sings, “Live the way you dreamed you’d be, sing the songs that set you free.” Well, here it is. Here they are.Produced at David Malony’s Blue Ewe Studio, Brambleland is available at Joe’s Island Music, the Whidbey CyberC@fe, or from Timothy, c/o 6296 S. Brighton Beach Road in Clinton.”