Damien Jurado is an elusive artist. Listening through to his latest album The Monster Who Created Pennsylvania, it's not always clear what the songs are about but there's certainly enough intrigue here to make you come back for another play and then perhaps for another.
Jurado doesn't have a particularly standout voice. The arrangements are spare and sparse. This music works for me in its unwillingness to join the dots, to make things easy for its listener. I spent most of yesterday listening to the record and trying to figure of why I liked it so much so he must be doing something right.
You get ten songs here. All built on the same basic guiding principles which seem to be primarily Cinematic and Literary narrative ones. Jurado isn't here to answer questions and it sometimes feels like staring at a Mark Rothko painting in a gallery and asking yourself why it moves you so much.
I like it very much anyhow. I can tell you little about its themes but it's a record that might draw you closer into its murky depths with repeated plays. Sometimes its the quiet ones, and here that's most definitely the case.
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