Damien Jurado

Damien Jurado's last album St. Bartlett was one of my favorites of 2010...so i was excited to get a copy of Maraqopa in the mail last month...and even more excited to hear what's inside. My take: Maraqopa is not quite so devastatingly spectral, so ghostly pale, so haunting as St. Bartlett. But on the positive side, it is significantly more warm and human...and it's got some really wonderful, sort of Richard Thompson-ish smouldery guitar on the opening track, which is also the giveaway single: "Nothing is the News"