Gillian Welch's Americana songs unfold like short stories, with a clarity of vision that roots different albums in a shared fictional world. The ghost that haunts the reedy lament “Caleb Meyer” might rise from the same churchyard as the buried daughter in the plaintive lullaby “Annabelle”. And the existential defeat in the languid strum of “My Morphine” quivers in the minor-key “The Way It Goes”.