Iris DeMent with Pieta Brown

From the moment she burst onto the scene back in the early ’90s, Iris DeMent’s voice has resonated with lovers of folks and country music. It’s a weathered-but-inviting croon that belied her years back when her debut, Infamous Angel, arrived in 1992, delivering a style of folk that drew upon her country Arkansas roots as well as the gospel music that filled her Pentecostal childhood. The likes of John Prine, Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle and Merle Haggard heard the authenticity in her introspective songs and made a point of collaborating with the rising roots star. On her newest album The Trackless Wood, DeMent lends her incredible instrument to songs she constructed using the words of Russian poet Anna Akhmatova — inspired by raising an adopted Russian daughter — and recording at her home with little more instrumentation than her piano. It’s a remarkable collection every bit the equal of DeMent’s past work.