Good and Green Again

Like a roiling campfire on a cool autumn night, Columbus, Georgia-born, Durham, North Carolina-based Jake Fussell’s Good and Green Again radiates a bewitching euphonious luminosity. Decidedly more sonically expansive and lushly detailed than the singer-guitarist’s three previous albums, Good and Green Again was produced by James Elkington (Jeff Tweedy, Michael Chapman, Steve Gunn) and engineered by Jason Richmond. In addition to assorted instrumental accompaniment by Elkington, the nine-track album’s gossamer soundscape stems from a collaboration between Fussell’s regular bandmates Casey Toll (upright bass), Libby Rodenbough (strings) and Nathan Golub (pedal steel), augmented by Joe Westerlund (drums), Joseph Decosimo (fiddle), Anna Jacobson (French horn, trumpet) and vocals by Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy (Will Oldham).

Highlighting Fussell’s penchant for imaginative interpretation, the album’s opening track and first single, ‘Love Farewell’, recasts a traditional play-party song from the 1800s, ‘Come Philanders’, into a tender, melancholic rumination on love during wartime. Similarly, Fussell’s dulcet tenor voice and soft flatpicking style lend a wistful, dreamy quality to the familiar Anglo-American ballad ‘The Golden Willow Tree’. Among the original compositions on Good and Green Again are three instrumentals, plus ‘Washington’, which features lyrics inspired by a hooked rug woven by an anonymous late 19th-century American artist.