[rating=8.00]
It is an amazing feeling to see and hear live music that leaves you with a desire to lead a simpler life. When it strips away all of the feelings of discontentment and wanting things we don’t need, it leaves us better than when we came to it. That is the experience of watching Jake Xerxes Fussell play, and with his new album, What in the Natural World, and a string of gigs opening for Wilco, there are plenty of opportunities to listen. His new record follows 2015’s phenomenal self-titled release, and continues to shape his identity as a Southern singer-songwriter you need to know.
Fussell gives an understated and nuanced performance both on his records and on the stage, but they remain wholly different experiences. On stage, Fussell often sits along with his guitar, making for a quiet and rawer set. On What in the Natural World, he draws out his notes, takes his time and really digs into some beautiful, layered arrangements. To see him with a full band would truly be a treat. The lazy-sweet high notes of “Have You Ever Seen Peaches Growing On a Sweet Potato Vine” and the enchanting, old world melody of “St. Brendan’s Isle” are standouts on this record, and Fussell navigates them smoothly and warmly. The beautiful “Furniture Man” is further beautified with a sloping steel guitar and “Billy Button” is made all the more whimsical with Fussell’s thoughtful articulation.
His sound falls somewhere between folk and blues, and to hear him play is, in some ways, like getting a vivid history lesson. At a recent show at New York City’s Beacon Theatre, Fussell transported the audience back in time with his covers of Duke Ellington (the fabulous 1941 tune “Jump for Joy”) and the Alan Lomax singers, sending a hush across the grand space. Listening to Fussell, you are getting an education of Southern music and of roots music. Friend and collaborator William Tyler even calls him a “professor.” The Georgia-bred Fussell has a calming force of a voice that draws you in, like a good storyteller should, and he treats the precious pieces of heritage he chooses to cover with the utmost respect. Mining obscure minstrel music, poetry and work songs, Fussell has a knack for curation, and that shines on What in the Natural World.
