Damien Jurado - Maraqopa

If nothing else, ‘Nothing Is The News’ makes for an arresting and audacious opening track to Damien Jurado’s tenth LP Maraqopa. As can be the case with long standing tortured-man-and-his-guitar acts, Jurado found himself in something of a rut sometime during the last decade, even without conceding an accompanying drop in songwriting quality. Nevertheless, having pushed out the same old (and arguably exhausted) textures and emotions for a few throws too many, Jurado’s 2010 effort Saint Barlett enlisted the help of producer Richard Swift, coming into the fold as more of a bona fide collaborator and partner than a producer, such were the intensity of his fingerprints on Jurado’s sound. ‘Nothing Is The News’ is the logical extension of Jurado’s new production-focused renaissance. As an act primarily recognised for reedy vocals, maudlin lyricism and delicately strummed acoustic guitars, this opening track opens the floodgates even more widely to new sounds, ideas and ambitions.

As with so many of these songs, the six minute track is built upon a small snatch of repeated vocal melody - but on this occasion bolstered and supported by the swirl of incongruously psychedelic rock lapping around it. With backing vocals swishing around the speakers and a texture led by a meandering and expressive lead electric, Swift’s production helps Jurado to realise ambitions firmly out of reach for a more organic one-mic-in-a-room approach to recording.

Second track ‘Life Away From The Garden’ - whilst sounding entirely removed from its predecessor - makes similarly positive contact between Jurado’s songwriting and Swift’s production. With eerie call and response between Jurado and a youthful sounding chorus as the thing builds, the warbling lead and the haunting backing vocals finally coalesce for a strident and uplifting coda. It’s a trick afforded by the marvel of the recorded album - difficult to replicate onstage, impossible to do alone, and only satisfying to hear in the form that it takes on Maraqopa. At the front end of things then, the production techniques on Maraquopa not only support Jurado, but are the making of what he’s trying to achieve.

From thereon in, however, the remainder of the tracks have a more complicated relationship with their production, and Jurado and Swift aren’t working in such effective tandem. Almost as if he’s written himself in his corner, Jurado is left with another eight tracks which would be better served by a more traditional live recording feel, but are forced into accommodating needless production flourishes simply because the album’s opening tracks have set the tone. With something like ‘Museum of Flight’, Jurado’s gorgeous and burrowing approach to pop writing is marred by a needlessly hokey texture stomping in to weigh down the chorus’ lovely lilt. Get on YouTube, and find Jurado giving a recent live session of the same song. Just his creaking falsetto and modestly thumb-strummed guitar are more than enough to effectively (and affectingly) sell this wispy verse-bridge-chorus number. On record, the added drums, electronics and what-not are clearly there purely for the sake of it - sounding hollow, distracting and detrimental in their efforts to add gloss.

Sadly, this is a prevalent theme across a lot of Maraqopa. To be sure, Jurado himself is largely on fine form - delivering ghostly melodies, tight songwriting and dark lyricism just as competently as we have come to expect.  However, the opening songs set Maraqopa down a path which it seems unprepared to commit to, leaving us with a frustrating collection of could-be excellent tracks smothered by their needless production techniques, not to mention an album that feels generally out of balance thanks to a hazy and proggy six minute opener awkwardly giving rise to much wispier two and a half minute ditties. These songs already had enough spine to be spine-tingling, and while they're certainly not ruined by Swift's slight heavy handedness, it's a shame that they weren't allowed a little more breathing space and overarching cohesion.