The new album, coming out Tuesday, is a masterful collection of gothic Americana music, filled with Fisher's evocative, subtly shifting baritone, deeply probing lyrics, and various folk-noir colors from electric and acoustic guitars, violin, mandolin, trumpet, and drums, along with hushed backup vocals from Kristin Hersh, Jess Klein, and Blake Hazard.
Many of the musicians are from the Boston area, as was Fisher, who lived here for 23 years before just moving back to the Mojave Desert in California, where he grew up. Before he left, however, he shared his thoughts about the new studio album, which this time blends original songs with some haunting traditional tunes that Fisher reworked.
"I wanted to make a certain examination of traditional music vs. my own," says Fisher, an intense, bushy-bearded presence who talks about music with an intellectual acuteness reminiscent of Paul Simon's. "And looking at traditional music was a way to look at how you're measuring up yourself. . . . My goal was to make it seamless, so unless you were looking at the song credits, you couldn't tell what was new or old."
The album, which is coming out on well-respected local indie Kimchee Records, starts with an 1865 tune, "River in the Pines." It's about two ill-fated lovers who meet premature deaths, one by drowning accidentally.
"I found the subject matter to have resonance in modern life. It's funny how an old song can have an effect on you that the current Top 40 will never have," says Fisher, who transforms the track into a kind of Townes Van Zandt elegy. Of the more hopeful pieces, there is "Soft Hand," a sweet love song that Fisher also let the Farrelly brothers use in their recent film, "Stuck on You." And the original "Fare Thee Well" is a brilliant meditation on perseverance: "Faith can heal a lot of wounds here at night in this rented room," he sings.
