Jay Farrar, Will Johnson, Anders Parker, Yim Yames: New Multitudes

It’s the Mermaid Avenue treatment, but with a topical focus that makes the album feel like a transmission from the man himself. The Dust Bowl-bred politics and protest are absent here, replaced by a whole lot of introspection as Guthrie either consoles himself against the limitations of life and love—he was facing flagging health and a third divorce—or exudes an optimism that seems both romantic and blithe. On “No Fear,” Johnson leads a raw four-man campfire jam, joyously singing, “I’m here on my deathbed, taking my last breath / Got no fears in life, got no fears of death.” But one song later, on the “Wimoweh”-evoking “Changing World,” Yames coos, “I’m afraid to live here, friend, I’m afraid to die.”

This crew walks a similar musical divide, trading in a mix of upbeat ramble (“Fly High”), electric blues (“Angel’s Blues”), and light psychedelia (“My Revolutionary Mind”), with, of course, a seared layer of slowcore slag and bearded bag-man whisper over everything. A jug jam morphs into a mournful dirge. Acoustic strum is run off by distorted bluster. Placid mantras emerge from strings that buzz like a phalanx of circular saws. The effect is both panoramic and cloistered, an aptly manic-depressive tribute not only to the band’s source material and Guthrie’s lasting relevance, but to the lonesome crowded West that so many have worked to document since.

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