When I’m Called

North Carolinian troubadour Jake Xerxes Fussell has made his name rehoming other people’s words, regaling their dusted-down fables in a convivial baritone to the bucolic strains of an understated indie-Americana. For his fifth full-length, and debut on Fat Possum, this artful archive translator strays beyond the proclivity for traditional Southern folk which has marked previous outings, sourcing material from multimedia artist Maestro Gaxiola and Benjamin Britten (check the endearing version of ‘Cuckoo!’, with Fussell incanting Jane Taylor’s original lyrics accompanied by the ever-dulcet Joan Shelley), alongside a Scottish field-recording takeaway (basis for the horn-enriched, almost Bill Callahan-like ‘Feeing Day’) courtesy of painter, musician and cultural anthropologist Art Rosenbaum. Stashing his ego into neutral, the songs always taking centre-stage, Fussell reverently rekindles the album’s run of travel tales (earthly expeditions and adventures in the afterlife), as producer James Elkington fleshes out the minstrelsy core with piano, pedal steel, dobro, synth and lush string arrangements, the latter lending an ethereal chamber-music charm to the aforementioned ‘Cuckoo!’ and touching closer, ‘Going to Georgia’.