Matt Bauer has again turns to the subject of his native Kentucky with The Jessamine County Book of the Living, a record that is an intimate, personal, and often fantastical interpretation of the natural world. At times intensely spare, but more often blooming into sweeping orchestral arrangements, The Jessamine County Book of the Living, is a vision of central and eastern Kentucky as if arranged by Moondog and filtered through Hayao Miyazakis Princess Mononoke. The record exudes a fascination with the overwhelming abundance, power, beauty, and, ultimately, crushingly neutral indifference of the natural world. The Jessamine County Book of the Living is an album both highly emotional and oddly calming, alternately sprawling and economical, with light and beauty even in the darkest corners, and a darkness in the brightest light.