On Good and Green Again, Jake Xerxes Fussel not only ventures beyond his established mastery of songcatching and songmaking into songwriting, but likewise navigates fresh sonic and compositional landscapes, going green with lusher, more atmospheric and ambitious arrangements.

The result is the most conceptually focused, breathtakingly rendered, and enigmatically poignant record of his wondrous catalog.

It's also his most deliberately premeditated album, representing his fruitful return to a producer partnership after two self-produced projects, What in the Natural World (2017) and Out of Sight (2019).

This time James Elkington produced and played a panoply of instruments, bringing to Jake's arcane song choices his own peerless sense of harmony and orchestration, balance and dramatic tension, honed from collaborations with artists such as Michael Chapman, Steve Gunn, Joan Shelley, Richard Thompson, and Jeff Tweedy.

Jake knew after a 2018 Midwestern tour together that he wanted to work with Jim, appreciating his open ears, unorthodox influences, and flexibility in following instincts.

The pair enlisted a group of formidable players hailing from Durham, North Carolina (where Fussell lives) and elsewhere, including regular bandmembers Casey Toll (Mt.

Moriah, Nathan Bowles) on upright bass, Libby Rodenbough (Mipso) on strings, and Nathan Golub on pedal steel.

They were joined by welcome newcomers Joe Westerlund (Megafaun, Califone) on drums, Joseph Decosimo on fiddle, Anna Jacobson on brass, and veteran collaborator and avowed Fussell fan Bonnie "Prince" Billy, who contributes additional vocals.

Together this crew is uncannily able to pinpoint that magical place on Jake's musical map where melancholy, quietude, and head-nodding, foot-stomping joy commingle and transcend.

Album opener "Love Farewell" (featuring some beautiful singing by Bonnie "Prince" Billy) rings that bell with an elliptical tale of the folly of war, set to the world's most heartbreaking goodbye march for a lover left behind.

"Carriebelle" and "Breast of Glass" each similarly concerns, in its own way, romantic love and leavings.

All three songs highlight Jacobson's diaphanous, understated brass parts, tying them together in a true lover's knot.

"Rolling Mills Are Burning Down," with its distant keening strings and capacious sense of space, observes and mourns the loss of work and community in the wake of elemental disaster.

Nine-minute tour de force "The Golden Willow Tree," the sole explicitly narrative song herein, is a hypnotic, minimalist rendering of a tragic maritime ballad about scuttling an enemy ship in exchange for wealth and glory - and a captain's inevitable betrayal.

It's a rejoinder to "Love Farewell"'s naïve cheer in the face of imminent violence. If overall Good and Green Again sounds a little sadder and slower than Fussell's past records, well, maybe we're all a little sadder and slower these days.