(3/6/5) 007: Jake Xerxes Fussell – Going To Georgia
A meandering folk masterpiece from its first soft purr of guitar, Jake Xerxes Fussell's Good and Green Again was one of 2022's finest long-players, melding his expert guitar playing with a bruised and wooded voice that drew deep into its world with barely a flicker of strength.
Its centrepiece, the sprawling nine minutes of 'The Golden Will Tree', with its repeated meditative refrain, is the kind of song that could quite happily never end, just a rolling of the waves, of the tongue, that could, like a weighty memory, accompany you forever more without ever hinting at irritation.
Though only a shade over five minutes, Fussell's new single – the first to be lifted from his newly announced fifth LP – holds a similar power; the gentle shuffle of percussion, the rivulet of guitar, the faded timber of his voice, settling upon the day like a landscape you swear you've walked in before but can't quite recall the details of.
This makes sense, given the nature of the work that informed the forthcoming When I'm Called LP. "Recognized for his compelling transliterations of traditional music, Fussell took an atypical approach to the material on When I’m Called," the album's introduction states, "often constructing the music from the ground up, before considering what existing source material could be applied to the song."
Joined on the record by the excellent Blake Mills and Joan Shelley, as well as the renowned jazz pianist Robin Holcomb, and James Elkington who has recently released one of the year's finest instrumental records.
All points to something very special, and 'Going To Georgia' holds up to such scrutiny, offering something both warmly enticing and richly singular; a story told and repeated that never loses its ingrained sense of magic.
Pre-order the album via Bandcamp here
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