Temperamentally speaking, I am nostalgia-proof. To the extent that anything of the sort lurks deep in the recesses of my weaker moments, however, Sinners & Saints -- something of a cliched title, by the way, which is all I'll say negative from here on -- I feel a twinge of, well, something poignant on encountering this surviving testament to an Iowa City, Iowa, college-town music scene that once generated reverence amid the nation's folk-roots attuned and beyond.

The artists, who answered to every stereotype covering unassuming Upper Midwesterners, did their work and delivered it their way (an impressive flexing of muscular, albeit not posturing tough-guy, downhome American music) with precision, effectiveness and, as often as not, bluesy tone. They never wasted a note while making each sentiment sound lived and scar-marked.

Most prominently Greg Brown, Dave Moore and Bo Ramsey, the artists were proficient in shaping notable arrangements of traditional songs and writing strong originals. In the latter category Brown rose to particular prominence and even was honored with a New Yorker profile. At least in my impression, however, the three were close to equal in their respective talents. Today, retired formally or informally, Brown and Moore remain largely or wholly inactive, remembered mostly by those whose memories for exceptional musical figures are exceptionally long. Ramsey tours on occasion.

Cedar County Cobras, at their core Tom Spielbauer and April Dirks, bring a whole lot of the Iowa City sound to 2026 and Sinners & Saints. Dave Moore shows up to blow harmonica on a single cut, Spielbauer's "Motorbike." Throughout the disc Spielbauer's vocals are delivered in a gruff baritone that carries either Brown or the late Dave Van Ronk (especially on the jazz-blues standard "St. James Infirmary," which Van Ronk covered in his early career).

Among the guest artists is Heath Alan, whose saxophone sonically grounds three cuts so as to create the sense that the earth itself is grunting them up, with audible irritation. Weirdly, the result feels less sour than, to put it into an oxymoron, exhilaratingly unsentimental. The original "Bessie Smith's Last Ride" takes a notorious tragedy of blues and racism as a template with which to expose our own deeply troubled American moment, when all that separates the vulnerable from Smith's fate seems to have evaporated into the darkness of a revived hostility and bigotry. We need protest songs as desperately as we did in the 1960s. It appears we may need a new civil-rights movement, too.

Two of the 10 tracks are pulled from the Black gospel hymnbook: the traditional "Get Right Church" and the celebrated Thomas A. Dorsey masterpiece "Precious Lord." In the Cobras' handling neither is how you would hear it in its native landscape but sort of in the reimagined one you might encounter in the jumpiness of a jug-band rendition. You won't complain.