Anais Mitchell’s new album Hadestown is proof that music still has the power to surprise and delight.  It’s an honest-to-god album, the kind whose songs tell a story from beginning to end—specifically, the ancient Greek myth of the poet Orpheus and his doomed quest to rescue his wife Eurydice from the underworld. In Mitchell’s hands, the familiar saga is reimagined as unfolding in a version of the U.S. that simultaneously evokes our Depression-era past, the current financial disaster (though it was written before the stock market collapse), and a post-apocalyptic future. It’s a land where people hide behind walls in a misguided attempt to preserve their “freedom” and protect their riches.  The album will be released this March on Righteous Babe Records and features special guests Justin Vernon (Bon Iver) as Orpheus, Greg Brown as Hades, Ani Difranco as Persephone, the Haden Triplets (Petra, Rachel, and Tanya) as the Greek-chorus-like Fates and Ben Knox Miller of the Low Anthem as the messenger Hermes. Mitchell herself sings the part of Eurydice, the character whose (metaphoric) death propels Orpheus into “Hadestown.”