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┌────────┐
────┤ Info ├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
└────────┘
Artist | Damien Jurado
Title | Maraqopa
Genre | Indie Format | Album
Source | CDDA Time | 36:25
Label | Secretly Canadian Store | 2012
Catalog | SC250 Rip | 2016
Bitrate | 222 kbps Size | 61.39 MB
Freq | 44.1 kHz Encoder | Lame 3.98.4
┌────────┐
────┤ Tracks ├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
└────────┘
01. Nothing Is In The News 5:33
02. Life Away From The Garden 2:51
03. Maraqopa 3:42
04. This Time Next Year 4:00
05. Reel To Reel 4:31
06. Working Titles 3:47
07. Everyone A Star 4:22
08. So On, Nevada 2:31
09. Museum Of Flight 2:50
10. Mountains Still Asleep 2:18
┌────────┐
────┤ Notes ├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
└────────┘
Urban folk singer/songwriter Damien Jurado quietly built up one of the
strongest catalogs on the indie scene, earning high critical praise yet
somehow never quite getting his proper due. Nick Drake had a definite
impact on much of his work, but Jurado modeled his career on more
idiosyncratic, unpredictable figures like Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Lou Reed,
and Randy Newman - songwriters who followed their own muse wherever it took
them, whether fans and critics enjoyed it or not. His independence was born
at least in part from the influence of punk, and one of the results was a
concern for emotional authenticity that led him to delve into other
people's lives instead of his own.
Many of Jurado's best songs spun concise, literate tales of quiet, everyday
despair, which often earned him comparisons to short story writer Raymond
Carver. But his storytelling bent - not to mention his ambivalence toward
confessional material - arose from a stronger grounding in traditional folk
than spiritual compatriots like Elliott Smith or Cat Power. And with
detours into pop, roots rock, full-fledged electric indie rock, and even
found-sound experiments, Jurado ensured that his body of work was
impossible to accurately pin down.
Seattle singer/songwriter Damien Jurado is one of the better examples of
the somewhat invisible but very real trend of gentle folk musicians who
started out in hardcore bands. Along with Mark Thousands (whose work in
Youth of Today gave way to a hushed solo career), Dan Littleton (the Hated
to Ida), and even Ian MacKaye (Minor Threat and Fugazi eventually mellowing
into the Evens), Jurado's punk past was held in stark contrast to the spare
folk dirges that marked the beginnings of his solo career in the late '90s.
While hardcore and indie folk might represent two extremes, the musicians
who are versed in the ethos of punk tend to have a more imaginative
approach to their folk leanings than those who come up in the sleepy
coffeehouse scenes.
Be it production, instrumentation, or political lyrical undertones, there's
a slightly different perspective that's always under the surface. This has
always been the case with Jurado, whose fragile voice and stoic playing
have always just barely hidden themes of pain and longing more aggressive
than helpless. With his tenth studio outing, "Maraqopa", Jurado offers his
most colorful and nuanced set of songs yet, and while they're a far cry
from hardcore, they wander into places well removed - and far more
interesting - than his earlier wounded troubador role. Beginning with the
dusty road psychedelia of "Nothing Is The News", the album takes on a
vividly live feel.
Meandering lead guitars and bristling drums back up Jurado's ghostly
multi-tracked vocal arrangements, sounding like a modern take on '70s
British folk-rock. Some of his earlier work could fall under the Americana
bracket, but the far-out production of Richard Swift, reprising the
collaboration he and Jurado began on 2010's Saint Bartlett, pushes the
songs to their least predictable limits. Echoplex-treated anguished
screams, organ swells, and the shakingly creepy children's chorus backing
up every line of "Life Away from the Garden" are perhaps the opposite of
typically cloying Americana.
"Maraqopa" reaches its peak on the Phil Spector-ish "Reel To Reel". The
lush production packs in dozens of disjointed sounds yet remains wide open,
offering ample room for Jurado to deliver earnestly beautiful lines to his
subject: a bedroom rock star offering the narrator 'The greatest songs I'll
ever hear from a band you started in your mind'. It's a touchingly naked
moment, and ironically, happening in one of the busiest arrangements on the
album. Painting from a broad palette of sounds and singing from a well of
strong melodies, the record works best as a whole piece, revealing new
elements and deeper dynamics with subsequent listens.
While Jurado's life as an angry young punk may not be apparent from his
work on "Maraqopa", what can be heard vividly is a bold progression that
encapsulates all the phases that came before it and results in his most
adventurous and fulfilling work to date.
┌────────┐
────┤ Group ├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
└────────┘