Jay Farrar, Will Johnson, Anders Parker & Yim Yames
Album: New Multitudes
Label: Rounder
Tracks: 12+11
Website: http://www.newmultitudes.com

This review must, I'm afraid, begin with what might seem an inordinate amount of exposition… The starting point is the unpublished and/or uncompleted works of Woody Guthrie, from which Billy Bragg and Wilco started the ball rolling in the late 1990s when they were invited by Woody's daughter Nora to make recordings of some of those lyrics, the results appearing on two successive Mermaid Avenue records (now reissued with a bonus third disc of further recordings, hopefully to be received for review shortly). There were, of course, still a very large number of lyrics (and fragments of lyrics) remaining in the stash at the Woody Guthrie Foundation, and some of these formed the basis for subsequent ventures by Blackfire and Jonatha Brooke and last year's multi-artist collection Note Of Hope. The New Multitudes project is more of a direct successor to the Bragg/Wilco recordings; following an intensive period of sifting through the Guthrie Foundation archive in 2006 (with Nora's blessing), it almost by accident ended up concentrating largely on lyrics from Woody's earliest songwriting years in the 30s in Los Angeles. Initially it was to be a solo album by Jay Farrar, leader of Son Volt (the outfit that evolved out of Uncle Tupelo in parallel to Wilco), but Jay took on board for the sift Anders Parker (of Gob Iron and Varnaline), and the two then recorded a handful of songs before inviting Yim Yames (alias Jim James of My Morning Jacket) in to collaborate and then Will Johnson (of Texan indie-rockers Centro-matic) to help flesh out the musical settings. Thus was the New Multitudes project born…

We need also to remember that - in Nora's own words - "Woody was a spewing fountain of words", and thus sometimes the musicians needed to whittle his sheer number of verses down a bit (or a lot in some cases!). Consequently, even though the primary focus of the set's dozen songs is inevitably going to be the lyrics (in whatever state of abridgement they've ended up here), the music is pretty much engrossing in its own right, and covers a diverse array of styles within the loose bracket of Americana.

Each of the four protagonists here takes lead vocal duty on the three selections for which he also supplied the music, and although this inevitably points up differences in the musical personalities there's a greater overall consistency than we might expect. I was surprised to find that Yim's responsible for the strongest items, from the majestic sweeping mellotron-backed My Revolutionary Mind to the interesting collation of familiar sources that makes up Changing World via the troubadour-style Talking Empty Bed Blues (which is neither spoken nor a strict blues). Jay's contributions are companionable and quite wistful in character, arguably more folk-rock in style than Americana, with the title track ending the disc as more of a mantra than a song. Will's contributions are the most diverse, varying from the desperately yearning sparseness of Chorine My Sheba Queen to cranking up grungey riffs on No Fear and pounding electric-Dylan-style harmonica with guitar distortion aplenty on VD City. After those adventures, Anders' contributions bring a different complexion, from the almost casual calm of Fly High to the tough, Crazy Horse rolling Angel's Blues, with only the fairly anonymous modern-day guitar rock of Old LA disappointing.

The second disc contains 11 bonus cuts recorded at the same sessions; in one or two cases these prove not much more than fragments, though to be fair we're not left with the feeling that these are just leftovers, sweepings from the proverbial cutting-room-floor, and there are some reasonable lyrics among them that don't deserve to be left in the vault. In terms of the music, Anders takes six of the cuts, Jay the remaining five; they don't possess quite the same degree of stylistic variation (or musical interest) as those on the first disc, with several tracks veering uncertainly towards rock and further away from Americana models, whereas once again there are hints of familiarity in derivation (San Antone Meat House rather obviously references the infamous Rising Sun for instance). But cuts such as the plaintive World's On Fire and the sinister Atom Dance make the second disc worth having, even if its total playing time only stretches to a mere 33 minutes.

The package contains an integrated 36-page booklet that usefully reproduces the lyrics for all 23 items in the form of facsimiles of Woody's original jottings - but, somewhat curiously in view of the importance of the project, there are no background notes supplied.

David Kidman