My taste in folk music, not unlike doom metal, is hit or miss. There has to be a certain combination of elements for me to enjoy an album in either genre. I’m not sure if I could tell you what all those elements are, but I can tell you that one of the most crucial is that the artist or band, while being good at their craft, doesn’t try too hard. They don’t force anything.
Jake Xerxes Fussell is such an artist. His guitar playing and vocals are simple, haunting, and the work of an expert craftsman – and none of it is forced. None of it is for show. It simply is, and his new album Good and Green Again continues his string of top-notch folk music that instantly transports you to different times and places that resonate with lessons needed in modern time.
“Love Farewell” is the sound of the sun rising or setting, depending on your mood when you hear it. It can be a song of moving forward after the loss of love or realizing a love is ending. “Carriebelle” adds solemn horns to a solemn song about the perils of booze and heartbreak. The horns continue their lonely cries on “Breast of Glass,” in which Fussell sings about wishing how he could keep a memory inside him forever – all the while knowing his hold on it would be fragile.
“Frolic,” “What Did the Hen Duck Say to the Drake?”, and “In Florida” are three lovely instrumentals on the album, something I hadn’t heard from Fussell before this record, and they’re all great additions. Fussell is great at writing, playing, and singing songs about the plight of the working class (or finding obscure songs about the subject and reinterpreting them in a new way), and “Rolling Mills Are Burning Down” is one such track. He sings about workers watching their jobs being reduced to ashes, knowing their way of life and means of earning bread are gone.
“The Golden Willow Tree” is a nine-minute-long tale of a scuttled ship, betrayal, and the loss of wealth and glory. The album ends with “Washington,” Fussell’s tribute / satirical salute to the first President of the U.S. and the way we, as Americans, tend to deify the Founding Fathers.
It’s another lovely record from Fussell with strength in its subtlety.
Keep your mind open.
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[Thanks to Sam at Pitch Perfect PR.]