Songfacts®:

• "Calling All the Gods" was born out of a collaboration between Feist and her bandmates Todd Dahlhoff and Shahzad Ismaily. Drawing inspiration from phrases in Emily Wilson's translation of Homer's Odyssey, where any line could serve as a potential song lyric, they generated 30 hours of improvisations.
  
  The idea for the song crystallized when Feist's friend, film director Mike Mills, suggested combining two improvisations: "calling all the gods" and "the earth sustains all different kinds of people," forming the basis for the song.
  
  "It's about humanity and compassion," Feist told Mojo magazine. "Anyone of us can make the world a better place every day with every decision we make. I don't always remember when someone is being aggressive on the road, but as the world is on a brand new scale of migration, there should be a human baseline of empathy."
• Brooklyn, New York multi-instrumentalist, improviser and Okkervil River band member Sarah K Pedinotti contributed additional vocals, percussion and field recording samples.
• Feist recorded "Calling All the Gods" for her sixth studio album, Multitudes. She crafted the songs during the COVID lockdown, a pivotal time when the singer embraced new motherhood while navigating the grief of losing her father, the artist Harold Feist. Feist composed the material on an old nylon-string guitar, which became her instrument of choice during the pandemic,
  
  "Maybe it was because of the sleeping baby over there, but I craved the softness of the nylon string," she told Apple Music. "I did not want to plug into an amp."