Jake Xerxes Fussell’s “When I’m Called” Is Adrift in the Expanse of Time

Jake Xerxes Fussell: When I’m Called | ★★★★½ | Fat Possum Records; July 12

When I’m Called is the fifth album from Durham guitarist and singer Jake Xerxes Fussell. But it feels like the first that’s really a Jake Xerxes Fussell album.

For the better part of a decade, Fussell has blown the dust from and breathed new life into songs from folk music’s forgotten corners, proving himself an expressive arranger and attentive scholar, packaging charmingly antiquated lyrics within music that sometimes rollicks and sometimes broods, always balancing reverence with a keen sense of what the songs mean in the present.

His earlier albums feel motivated by a sense of responsibility to maintain tradition. But in When I’m Called, he switched things up, sketching melodies first and then picking songs that work with them.

Populated with songs that consistently find characters at varying moments of transition, it’s enhanced by Fussell’s clear-eyed baritone as well as rich and airy arrangements played by a variety of gifted backers—multi-instrumentalist and producer James Elkington, bassist Ben Whiteley, and drummer Joe Westerlund form the core. 

The album doesn’t come across as solely anchored to the past. Rather, it’s adrift in the expanse of time, feeling both the burden and the freedom of folk music’s long tradition and Fussell’s fleeting time carrying the torch. 

Travel songs loop, repeating their first verse at the end. Suggesting that the rider on opener “Andy,” guided by the blearily grinning lope of Fussell’s solitary guitar, will constantly be chasing his goal of taking Andy Warhol’s star. That the narrator of “Leaving Here, Don’t Know Where I’m Going,” carried along by elegantly intertwining guitars, bass, drums, and horns, will always be departing.

Chance meetings sear in the brain but don’t last in the physical world. On “Feeing Day,” an encounter with a bonnie lass ends with them forgetting their troubles—“Glass after glass / The time did pass”—before the song fades into a haze of relaxed strums, resolute horns, and entrancing acoustic drone.

A fun and rambunctious animal tale is haunted by death and responsibility. Giddy picking can’t outrun the drums and piano that commandingly thrum on “Who Killed Poor Robin?” as the lethal sparrow, the grave-digging crow, and more all do their part to carry the deceased to ground. The owl declares “I’ll scream and I’ll howl” when he preaches the funeral, but it won’t change what’s happened.

None of these moves are, on their face, new or revelatory. But on When I’m Called, Fussell displays the depth of feeling they inspire in him. And that is where the magic happens. 

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