Mission Bell by Amos Lee

Mission Bell, Amos Lee's fourth studio album, arrived on Blue Note on January 25, 2011, and it sounds like a songwriter who went looking for wide-open spaces and found them. Joey Burns of Calexico produced it, Calexico sit in, and the guest list reads like a dream roots-music dinner party: Willie Nelson, Lucinda Williams, Sam Beam, Priscilla Ahn, Pieta Brown and James Gadson.

Lee's voice, equal parts folk, rock and soul, sits at the center of it all, warm and unhurried over dusty, sun-bleached arrangements. "Windows Are Rolled Down" is the song that lingered longest on the countdowns, and "Flower", "El Camino" and "Violin" fill out a quietly generous record.

Its chart story is a strange one. Mission Bell opened at number one on the Billboard 200 on sales of 40,000, the smallest first-week tally for a chart-topper since SoundScan began counting, beating the mark Cake's Showroom of Compassion had set just two weeks earlier. A week later it had tumbled to 26.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.