The WildRoots, who have been around for a while without quite becoming famous, are at their core three musicians (Victor Wainwright and Stephen & Patricia Ann Dees), but Sessions is awash in guest artists (a whopping 29 of them) with compatible musical leanings. Over a generous 16 cuts, all but two the work of Stephen Dees with and without cowriters, the band offers a contemporary roots view of popular music. Much is based in something close to mid-century New Orleans/Memphis soul and r&b; the rest is hard-core blues in various incarnations alongside rock 'n' roll and the periodic nod to folk and jazz.

If there is something not to like here, repeated listenings have failed to expose it. Ordinarily, 14 original songs on a single album are, if not exactly the stuff of nightmares, usually the sound of tedium. Rather incredibly, that is not the case in the present instance. The quality does not falter, and each song, including the smartly chosen covers from bluesman Eddie Floyd and Lieber & Stoller, is as welcome as the last. Of course, you'll still find your favorites, though if you keep listening (as you will) I imagine that your choices will shift as you notice details you'd missed on earlier visits.

My own favorites at the moment go by default to the rootsiest, which include "Cradled in the Bosom of Jerusalem" (a spiritual written by Stephen Dees but with the feel of the gloriously traditional), "King Snake Crawl Revisited" (a knowing tribute to the spirit of downhome blues) and the folkish "Bend in the Road." Dees & Pat Travers' "Misty Morning in New Orleans" makes for some extraordinarily riveting r&b storytelling.

Stephen Dees produces all this, too, with instincts never less than assured. The exemplary guest artists are generally unfamiliar names to me; I do recognize the late harmonica player Lucky Peterson, vocalist John Oates and drummer Michael Shrieve (Santana). Though these performers are generally in and out for only a cut or two, they and their colleagues maintain a singular coherence, as if all understood in their bones what they are here to do: put together songs both similar to and different from others you've heard all your life. The songs represent a distillation of influences mixed into an original vision which is then fitted for a long stretch of listener enjoyment.

In other words, Sessions finds what is durable in that most disposable form of entertainment, American popular music.