Cookie Rankin calls it the "smorgasbord."

The 14 songs on the Rankins' latest album, Uprooted, are as varied as the offerings on a buffet table -- a bit of pop, a bit of funk, a bit of country and a bit of the traditional.

Cookie and Jimmy Rankin, in London recently to promote the album and a fall tour, describe the recording as a further stretch from the work that the Cape Breton family did on its six previous recordings.

"I think what we're doing is an extension of what we've been doing for 20 to 25 years," Cookie Rankin says.

The five brothers and sisters from Cape Breton Island -- Cookie, Jimmy, John Morris, Heather and Raylene -- have won five Junos, more than a dozen East Coast Music Awards, five SOCAN Awards and two Canadian Country Music Awards.

Booked for Western Fair

Tour dates have not been set yet, but the group will play the Western Fair on Sept. 17.

The Rankins' music is often seen as traditional, but Jimmy says the band would still be playing pubs instead of concert halls if they had stuck with that genre.

"We're not traditional; we have traditional elements," he says, pointing specifically to fiddles.

Cookie traces their amalgamation of traditional and modern elements back to their childhood.

"The first music we ever heard was fiddle music. That was our childhood music. We didn't listen to Sharon, Lois and Bram; we didn't have Raffi in our lives. We lived next to the town hall where we listened to fiddle music, all live.

"But at the same time, we live in North America, where we were very much exposed to the contemporary, the rock and roll, the Led Zeppelins, the Elton Johns. And other people would bring music to us because they knew we were a musical family -- like African drum music."

But with Uprooted, there is a greater sense of change in the air than with any previous Rankins album.

NEW GROUND

"It's not like we've pulled a David Bowie and totally changed our image," Jimmy says. "But there's stuff on there that's new ground for us."

The guitar is more prominent in the arrangements.

Tunes are more radio-friendly, particularly Maybe You're Right, which Cookie co-wrote with Gordie Sampson, and Jimmy's Movin' On, which has been a hit on country radio.

Techniques more closely associated with rap and hip hop, such as sampling and drum loops, show up. The haunting Weddings, Wakes and Funerals, written by Jimmy with Kevin MacMichael, is the most experimental track on the CD.

The sisters' famous harmonies are less often heard, in favor of each of them as well as Jimmy taking turns at being lead vocalist on different songs with the others as backup singers.

Still, the CD has many traditional songs with new arrangements, including two Gaelic-language tunes, O Tha Mo Dhuil Buit (O, How I Love Thee) and An Innis Aigh (The Happy Isle).

Jimmy and Cookie give a lot of the credit for this new development to George Massenburg, a producer who has also worked with James Taylor and Bonnie Raitt. Jimmy says Massenburg' "strategy" is to think through the material carefully.

It helped that the Rankins decided to devote significantly more time to recording this album than they did to their others -- seven months as opposed to six weeks.

TAKING MORE TIME

"The last couple of albums we had done were done in the midst of touring . . . ," Cookie explains. "We were extremely busy and preoccupied with other things. With this one, we took a lot of time to write, research and think about what direction we wanted to bring to it."

There were also significant personal changes, which Cookie and Jimmy suggest propelled the group toward more sophisticated music.

The most traumatic was the death of their mother Kathleen.

Her passing was not sudden -- she had suffered from cancer for 17 years -- but Jimmy says the group would not have started recording, especially in distant Nashville, had they known the end of her life was imminent.

Their father Buddy had died earlier.

Cold Winds, by Heather, is a reflection on the loss of loved ones and a tribute not only to Kathleen but also to a friend who was dying of AIDS.

On the other end of life, Raylene gave birth to a boy toward the end of the studio sessions.

And while Jimmy remains the main songwriter, others, especially Raylene, are contributing more than they used to.

"I think as you get older and have been doing this for a while, you tend at times to dig deeper," Jimmy says.