Tag: Jake Xerxes Fussell Out of Sight

Review: Jake Xerxes Fussell – Out of Sight

Jake Xerxes Fussell is one of those artists who wouldn’t have been on my radar were it not for this blog. A country guitarist who sings songs about fish mongers? That’s usually not in my wheelhouse. Fussell’s last album, What in the Natural World, was sent to me by his label and it turned out to be one of my favorite albums of that year.

Now they’ve sent me Out of Sight, and it’s already in my top 20 of the year so far. The opener, “The River St. Johns” is that fish monger’s song I mentioned above, which Russell remembers hearing as a kid and he reproduces with great affection. “Micheal Was Hearty” is his reworking of an Irish folk song from the late 1800’s into, get this, a waltz. It works. It works quite well. “Oh Captain” is his cover of an obscure Willis Laurence James song from the 1920’s and has Fussell singing the blues about a deckhand’s toil aboard his ship.

“Three Ravens” is another obscure 1920’s American songbook classic that has Fussell’s guitar work shining throughout it, and the lap steel is a great touch. The soft bass drum on “Jubilee” is like the heartbeat of a child as she sees a carousel for the first time. “Swing and turn, jubilee. Live and learn, jubilee,” Fussell sings. It’s a simple message that carries a lot of weight and insight. “Winnsboro Cottonmill Blues” has Fussell singing about the hard life of a textile mill worker whose boss would “take the nickles off a dead man’s eyes to buy Coca-Colas and Eskimo Pies.”

The shuffle of the murder / love ballad “The Rainbow Willow” is only matched in its artistry by the lap steel guitar and Fussell’s vocals. The instrumental “16-20” is slightly creepy, yet warm – like a friend who emerges out of a fog on a lonely road. The closer is the spiritual classic “Drinking of the Wine,” which Fussell admits he sings like fisherman singing a net-hauling shanty.

I haven’t written anywhere near enough about Fussell guitar playing, which is so masterful that he makes every song sound easy. His vocals also seem effortless, and his backing band on this record is outstanding. Fussell mentions in the liner notes that he wanted this record to “sound like a band playing in a room – nothing too ornate or grandiose in concept.” He nailed it. Out of Sight is intimate and delightful.

Keep your mind open.

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Jake Xerxes Fussell’s new album, “Out of Sight,” due June 7th. The first single, “The River St. Johns,” however, is available now.

Photo by Brad Bunyea

“North Carolina-based folk and blues guitarist Jake Xerxes Fussell creates music that resides at the seams of Appalachia and the cosmos.” — NPR Music

“Jake Xerxes Fussell is a national treasure.” — Aquarium Drunkard

“Achingly beautiful. He has an uncanny ability to illuminate the present by propping up a window against the past.” — Uncut

Jake Xerxes Fussell is pleased to announce his third album, Out of Sight, out June 7th on Paradise of Bachelors, alongside the album’s first single, “The River St. Johns.” Of the track, Jake writes: ‘The River St. Johns’ comes straight from one of Stetson Kennedy’s Florida WPA recordings of a gentleman named Harden Stuckey doing his interpretation of a fishmonger’s cry, which he recalls from a childhood memory. What compelling imagery there: “I’ve got fresh fish this morning, ladies / They are gilded with gold, and you may find a diamond in their mouths.” I can’t help but believe him.

Listen “The River St. Johns” — https://youtu.be/RaJCnhbVM64

On his third and most finely wrought album yet, guitarist, singer, and master interpreter Fussell is joined for the first time by a full band featuring Nathan Bowles (drums), Casey Toll (bass), Nathan Golub (pedal steel), Libby Rodenbough (violin, vocals), and James Anthony Wallace (piano, organ). An utterly transporting selection of traditional narrative folksongs addressing the troubles and delights of love, work, and wine (i.e., the things that matter), collected from a myriad of obscure sources and deftly metamorphosed, Out of Sight contains, among other moving curiosities, a fishmonger’s cry that sounds like an astral lament (“The River St. Johns”); a cotton mill tune that humorously explores the unknown terrain of death and memory (“Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues”); and a fishermen’s shanty/gospel song equally concerned with terrestrial boozing and heavenly transcendence (“Drinking of the Wine”).

Read Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s essay on Fussell below.

“In our house we’ve listened to more Jake Fussell than any other individual artist over the past year, with the possible exception of Laurie Spiegel. We’ve had the opportunity to witness several intimate performances of Fussell’s (to my mind, he creates a new standard for the value of up-close musical experience) here in Louisville. As long as Jake Fussell is making records and playing shows, there is ample cause for optimism in this world. Fussell’s repertoire, and the manner in which he creates, constructs and presents it, displays such a beautiful and complex relationship to time and currency. He’s able to listen to and understand the presence of an old recording, of crusty dusty written-out pieces of music and memories of musical encounters. And then he overlays his own now-ness on those pre-existing presences so that the lives of older musical forces, in effect, link arms with Fussell’s in-progress trajectory and skip down the brick road, picking up desperate and willing compatriots along the way. Meaning: Jake lives in music as a true time-artist, using the qualities of time itself as irreplaceable elements of content.

“When Jake sings a sad song, he presents it in such a way that makes me want to say “Hey, but everything’s okay because you’re Jake Xerxes Fussell!” Hopefully it’s okay by him that I wouldn’t accept full-fledged nihilism from him even if he were standing naked on the ledge of a tall building with “this World is Shit” written on his shaved chest in, well, shit. His deal with his songs is too strong and blatantly valuable.” — Bonnie “Prince” Billy

Out of Sight Tracklist: 01. The River St. Johns 02. Michael Was Hearty 03. Oh Captain 04. Three Ravens 05. Jubilee 06. Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues 07. The Rainbow Willow 08. 16-20 09. Drinking of the Wine

Pre-order Out of Sight: From PoB (LP/CD): http://www.paradiseofbachelors.com/pob-042

Elsewhere (LP/CD/DL/stream): http://smarturl.it/PoB42

Keep your mind open.

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