So, I'm getting crazy hits on my Damien Jurado post, so I thought I'd just milk it for all it's worth. I also reviewed his live show at Blurt. Check it out here.
Also, we have been scrambling to fill space at the Dusted tumblr, and I think we're getting almost to the point where there's enough momentum to stop pushing so hard already. But I've still be writing a ton of reviews for the site, most recently of one by a New Zealand freakfest (and I mean this in the nicest way) called Orchestra of Spheres, which you can read here.
You know how much I like good percussion, right?
The other main news is that we are going to Chicago tomorrow, mostly to see Sean's freshman acting showcase, but we will also be hitting one of the final shows of Steppenwolf's "Tribes, and a Rempis Trio show at the Hideout. I'm very excited about it, and I really hope that the travel part goes smoothly. (We built in a couple of days so that if we were delayed, we might still make the showcase.)
I'm not sure I'll have very consistent internet, though, so this may be it for a while.
Showing posts with label Damien Jurado. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Damien Jurado. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
Friday, January 24, 2014
Damien Jurado
Once again, I have fallen hard and early...I would be surprised if Damien Jurado's Brothers and Sisters of the Eternal Son is not in my top five at the end of 2014. (It's right behind the new Protomartyr now at #2, but Jurado records have, in the past, been growers.)
I need to hack through my live review today, but meanwhile, here's what I wrote about the new record for Dusted.
"Ever since he began working with producer Richard Swift, Damien Jurado’s music has become progressively trippier and more psychedelic, slipping whatever folk-strumming bonds he might once have been tied by and vaulting into surreal, ineffable spirituality. He has also, since about Maraqopa, been experimenting again with 1960s rock sounds, infusing dream-fogged ambiguities with Richard Farina-ish guitar heat. Brothers and Sisters of the Eternal Son takes it all one step further, opening brightly lit portals to other realities, layering aching, longing, rock-slanting melodies with glittery, silver-toned transcendence."
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I also had a hand in Zachary Cale's Listed, which, for the first time, includes a Spotify playlist at the end, so you can hear as well as read.
I need to hack through my live review today, but meanwhile, here's what I wrote about the new record for Dusted.
"Ever since he began working with producer Richard Swift, Damien Jurado’s music has become progressively trippier and more psychedelic, slipping whatever folk-strumming bonds he might once have been tied by and vaulting into surreal, ineffable spirituality. He has also, since about Maraqopa, been experimenting again with 1960s rock sounds, infusing dream-fogged ambiguities with Richard Farina-ish guitar heat. Brothers and Sisters of the Eternal Son takes it all one step further, opening brightly lit portals to other realities, layering aching, longing, rock-slanting melodies with glittery, silver-toned transcendence."
More
I also had a hand in Zachary Cale's Listed, which, for the first time, includes a Spotify playlist at the end, so you can hear as well as read.
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
Tim Cohen pulls another rabbit from hat
My review of the new-ish Magic Trick album, River of Souls is up today at the Dusted Tumblr, which just passed its 100th post.
I said, "Both in his Fresh & Onlys project and here in the solo-thing-that-grew called Magic Trick, Tim Cohen has been moving gradually towards clarity, shrugging off the iridescent fuzz of Grey Eyed Girls and the home-taped indefiniteness of his first solo album to move into focus. Here in the follow up to 2012’s Ruler of the Night, Cohen continues to make his sound more legible than ever, while retaining the easy-going, transcendental mysticism that has always made his songs so charming.
"Cohen recorded River of Souls at his own Tree House studio with Phil Manley. Manley is a master of clean, uncluttered recording. His own band, The Fucking Champs, makes albums so sharply accurate you could cut your finger on them; they’re like metal albums sterilized for the operating theater. Yet while the two of them have cleared pretty much all the fuzz, allowing you to hear and separate layers of sound, Cohen maintains a certain soft and gentle feel. River of Souls is a precise rendering of laid-back ideas, one where you can hear every background vocal, every bass line, every slap and shiver of tambourine, without losing the general sense of hippie well-being."
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This is the one that reminds me of Sam & Dave.
The snow mostly missed us this time (sorry NYC), but damn, it's cold. I got out about a quarter of a mile to the main road this morning and decided that I would get frost-bite if I did my normal run. So I headed the other way, which goes through more woods and less open fields, and actually, it was pretty stunning, bright sun, white snow, blue sky and the sound of trees shifting in the wind. I had that wind at my back all the way back, up the big hill, and it was like a physical presence pushing from behind. Anyway, beautiful run, glad I did it, no sign of lingering damage. (From the wind or the big hill, which I've been avoiding because of my hip.) Bill and I used to always call that run the "Ireland run" because it's got some very pretty, wild looking hills where cows graze and in the summer it gets very green...haven't done it in probably a year.
Also, we're seeing Damien Jurado tonight. More about that later.
I said, "Both in his Fresh & Onlys project and here in the solo-thing-that-grew called Magic Trick, Tim Cohen has been moving gradually towards clarity, shrugging off the iridescent fuzz of Grey Eyed Girls and the home-taped indefiniteness of his first solo album to move into focus. Here in the follow up to 2012’s Ruler of the Night, Cohen continues to make his sound more legible than ever, while retaining the easy-going, transcendental mysticism that has always made his songs so charming.
"Cohen recorded River of Souls at his own Tree House studio with Phil Manley. Manley is a master of clean, uncluttered recording. His own band, The Fucking Champs, makes albums so sharply accurate you could cut your finger on them; they’re like metal albums sterilized for the operating theater. Yet while the two of them have cleared pretty much all the fuzz, allowing you to hear and separate layers of sound, Cohen maintains a certain soft and gentle feel. River of Souls is a precise rendering of laid-back ideas, one where you can hear every background vocal, every bass line, every slap and shiver of tambourine, without losing the general sense of hippie well-being."
More
This is the one that reminds me of Sam & Dave.
The snow mostly missed us this time (sorry NYC), but damn, it's cold. I got out about a quarter of a mile to the main road this morning and decided that I would get frost-bite if I did my normal run. So I headed the other way, which goes through more woods and less open fields, and actually, it was pretty stunning, bright sun, white snow, blue sky and the sound of trees shifting in the wind. I had that wind at my back all the way back, up the big hill, and it was like a physical presence pushing from behind. Anyway, beautiful run, glad I did it, no sign of lingering damage. (From the wind or the big hill, which I've been avoiding because of my hip.) Bill and I used to always call that run the "Ireland run" because it's got some very pretty, wild looking hills where cows graze and in the summer it gets very green...haven't done it in probably a year.
Also, we're seeing Damien Jurado tonight. More about that later.
Thursday, December 27, 2012
Amor de Dias
It's been snowing all day, very pretty, glad it's finally here. It's the kind of snow that wraps a soft thick blanket around everything, including sound, so that it seems even more quiet and peaceful than usual.
I had to drive to Brattleboro to get Sean, and the roads were dice-y in spots but not too bad. I had Damien Jurado's Maraqopa on most of the way there, and it was just about perfect for the trip...soft-spoken, but also kind of incandescent.
And now I'm home and listening to another reticent sort of pleasure, the second album from Amor de Dias. That's essentially Alistair McClean from the Clientele and Lupe Nunez-Fernandez from Pipas, both sides hushed and lovely, one indie-pop, one Latin, but not so much difference between the two as you'd expect.
I just wish my iPod would stop forgetting where it put this album. Pretty much every time I boot up, I have to manually locate it.
I had to drive to Brattleboro to get Sean, and the roads were dice-y in spots but not too bad. I had Damien Jurado's Maraqopa on most of the way there, and it was just about perfect for the trip...soft-spoken, but also kind of incandescent.
And now I'm home and listening to another reticent sort of pleasure, the second album from Amor de Dias. That's essentially Alistair McClean from the Clientele and Lupe Nunez-Fernandez from Pipas, both sides hushed and lovely, one indie-pop, one Latin, but not so much difference between the two as you'd expect.
I just wish my iPod would stop forgetting where it put this album. Pretty much every time I boot up, I have to manually locate it.
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Damien Jurado
Another of my early year favorites, reviewed today at Dusted...
Damien Jurado
Maraqopa
Secretly Canadian
“Nothing is the News,” the first single from Damien Jurado’s 10th full-length album, is full of latent smoke and thunder, a reeling trill of organ arcing out off of blues guitar, Jurado’s spectral tenor in the foreground, occasional earthier howls and shouts coming from deep inside the sound. It is, by far, the hardest rocking cut he’s done since 2002’s I Break Chairs, and yet, its fire is chilled, distanced, overlaid with an ectoplasmic shimmer. Its spectral, watery wash of sustained synths and organ tones will sound familiar to anyone who spent time with Saint Bartlett, Jurado’s first collaboration with Richard Swift. And yet, here this otherworldly aura hovers around warmer, more substantial sounds. It’s like you’re hearing the disembodied trace of a 1960s rock song, filtered through layers of glowing, hallucinatory calm.
More
"Nothing Is the News"
Damien Jurado
Maraqopa
Secretly Canadian
“Nothing is the News,” the first single from Damien Jurado’s 10th full-length album, is full of latent smoke and thunder, a reeling trill of organ arcing out off of blues guitar, Jurado’s spectral tenor in the foreground, occasional earthier howls and shouts coming from deep inside the sound. It is, by far, the hardest rocking cut he’s done since 2002’s I Break Chairs, and yet, its fire is chilled, distanced, overlaid with an ectoplasmic shimmer. Its spectral, watery wash of sustained synths and organ tones will sound familiar to anyone who spent time with Saint Bartlett, Jurado’s first collaboration with Richard Swift. And yet, here this otherworldly aura hovers around warmer, more substantial sounds. It’s like you’re hearing the disembodied trace of a 1960s rock song, filtered through layers of glowing, hallucinatory calm.
More
"Nothing Is the News"
Friday, February 3, 2012
Best faves through january
So I think I'm going to do this once a month or so, just to remind myself about what I was liking a few weeks ago and how it compares to what I'm liking now...also I'd love to hear what everyone else is into early on in 2012, if there's anyone out there anymore. Anyway, here are my favorite records through January.
Shearwater, Animal Joy (Sub Pop)...way out in front, more visceral than you'd imagine Shearwater could be, but also incredibly fragile, spiritual, delicate. I've got a PopMatters feature in the works on this (by which I mean, it's all done and god knows when they'll decide to run it...June would be about par for the course).
Sharon Van Etten, Tramp, (Jagjaguwar)...wrote about this one for Dusted, an almost ideal consolidation of her beautifully vulnerable, spare debut and her lusher, guttier Epic.
Damien Jurado, Maraqopa, (Secretly Canadian)...Jurado's second collaboration with producer Richard Smith is warmer and more immediate than Saint Bartlett, marginally more rocking, but still has a core of unknowability and mystery...the songs sort of glow in the dark. (I've got a slightly more coherent review in the pipe at Dusted on this.)
The Twilight Sad, No One Can Ever Know (Fat Cat)...Just finished my review of this one, and kind of too exhausted to try to find another way to say that this one is chillier, dryer, more rhythmically intense than previous outings, but with a really intriguing overlay of synthesizers.
Mark Lanegan Band, Blues Funeral (4AD)...I've barely started on this, but what can you say...that voice...chills. (also, did you ever think you'd hear gated snare on a Lanegan record? Me neither.)
Shearwater, Animal Joy (Sub Pop)...way out in front, more visceral than you'd imagine Shearwater could be, but also incredibly fragile, spiritual, delicate. I've got a PopMatters feature in the works on this (by which I mean, it's all done and god knows when they'll decide to run it...June would be about par for the course).
Sharon Van Etten, Tramp, (Jagjaguwar)...wrote about this one for Dusted, an almost ideal consolidation of her beautifully vulnerable, spare debut and her lusher, guttier Epic.
Damien Jurado, Maraqopa, (Secretly Canadian)...Jurado's second collaboration with producer Richard Smith is warmer and more immediate than Saint Bartlett, marginally more rocking, but still has a core of unknowability and mystery...the songs sort of glow in the dark. (I've got a slightly more coherent review in the pipe at Dusted on this.)
The Twilight Sad, No One Can Ever Know (Fat Cat)...Just finished my review of this one, and kind of too exhausted to try to find another way to say that this one is chillier, dryer, more rhythmically intense than previous outings, but with a really intriguing overlay of synthesizers.
Mark Lanegan Band, Blues Funeral (4AD)...I've barely started on this, but what can you say...that voice...chills. (also, did you ever think you'd hear gated snare on a Lanegan record? Me neither.)
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
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"
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Damien Jurado’s St. Bartlett
I wrote this a while ago, but the new Damien Jurado is good enough that I’ve listened to it a few times post-review (which doesn’t happen as much as it should, but you know tempis fugit) and like it, if anything, more than before.
Had an interesting conversation with the PR contact on this one, that apparently it’s hard to get people to review things by established, relatively mature artists like Jurado, when there are flash-in-the-pan geniuses like Wavves around. I believe the term “dinosaur” came up, even, and Jurado is considerably younger than I am. So, anyway, how depressing, but don’t fall into the trap. This is good stuff, regardless of who was president when the artist was born.
An unexpectedly lush set of tunes from a determined minimalist, this ninth full-length by Damien Jurado paints delicately the indeterminate outlines of remembered love, broken connections and imagined release. Recorded more or less in isolation at producer Richard Swift’s Oregon studio, the album nonetheless is well populated, teeming in its understated way with translucent textures of strings, piano, acoustic and electric guitar, and scratchy found sounds. It suggests and evokes rather than delineates. From transcendental “Cloudy Shoes” on down, you are not always sure what is happening in a song, only that it is freighted with rumination, rue and fond remembrance. One gets the sense that the narrative – in story-ish songs like “Rachel and Cali” or album-stopping “Kansas City” – continues in the pauses, that what Jurado tells you is only a scrap or two of what he’s seeing, thinking, recalling.
More
“Cloudy Shoes”
Had an interesting conversation with the PR contact on this one, that apparently it’s hard to get people to review things by established, relatively mature artists like Jurado, when there are flash-in-the-pan geniuses like Wavves around. I believe the term “dinosaur” came up, even, and Jurado is considerably younger than I am. So, anyway, how depressing, but don’t fall into the trap. This is good stuff, regardless of who was president when the artist was born.
An unexpectedly lush set of tunes from a determined minimalist, this ninth full-length by Damien Jurado paints delicately the indeterminate outlines of remembered love, broken connections and imagined release. Recorded more or less in isolation at producer Richard Swift’s Oregon studio, the album nonetheless is well populated, teeming in its understated way with translucent textures of strings, piano, acoustic and electric guitar, and scratchy found sounds. It suggests and evokes rather than delineates. From transcendental “Cloudy Shoes” on down, you are not always sure what is happening in a song, only that it is freighted with rumination, rue and fond remembrance. One gets the sense that the narrative – in story-ish songs like “Rachel and Cali” or album-stopping “Kansas City” – continues in the pauses, that what Jurado tells you is only a scrap or two of what he’s seeing, thinking, recalling.
More
“Cloudy Shoes”
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