Damien Jurado
And Now That I'm in Your Shadow

Has it ever happened to you to fall in love with an album just from its title? Well, that's exactly what happened to me with "And Now That I'm In Your Shadow." This should be etched on my tombstone, I keep telling myself. It's a phrase that, for me, has incredible power. A kind of today's "M'Illumino d'Immenso." Try pronouncing it yourself...

But I wasn't wrong. The album really is powerful...in its shadow. (O)Dark are the atmospheres, sad the musical chords, and solitary the lyrics.

Damien is a recent discovery. Considered one of the best songwriters on the indie scene, often called the Raymond Carver of song for his concise yet powerful lyrics, in just a few months he has made a place in my soul. It's the fifth album of his that I've bought and the seventh in his career. I can't consider any of those already in my possession to be less than wonderful.

I could perhaps have reviewed (maybe one day) "Ghost of David," my favorite, but that aforementioned title continues to be etched in my mind everywhere and every moment.

Perhaps I felt the need to purify myself from this obsession by writing about it.

"And now I'm in your shadow
I am motionless
I am black"

I don't know if you remember when in high school they teach(taught) Ungaretti and hermeticism and how a verse composed of one or two words, interruptions mid-sentence, and the silences that unfold between verses are much more important and "powerful" than a thousand verses and words put together.

This is what the song is and this is the album, the one for the whole.

Don't expect anything intimate or personal, his self in the songs is always hidden. Songs that are like portraits or still lifes of a common America like a penny. Figures, characters, situations, moments, and gestures that are everyday yet special and unique because they can happen to me as well as to you. Tiny life tales, betrayals ("What Were The Chances"), goodbyes and failed returns ("I'm Still Here"), murders, jealousy ("I Had No Intentions"), loneliness and trivial encounters ("Denton, TX") where places and people are even cited, yet all remains in absolute anonymity.

Acoustic guitar is the backdrop, strokes of violin that intensify the pathos, piano notes where desolation reigns, bursts of drums in the moments of silence. Nothing more. Yet an existential void is always around the corner...as announces the song "Montesano" of only three verses that closes the album:

"In a landslide
I can hear you...
Hear you walk away"

Damien Jurado

Water Ave S. (1997)

Reharsals For Departure (1999)

Ghost of David (2000)  (please listen and read "Medication"!!)

I Break Chairs (2002)

Where Shall You Take Me? (2003)

On My Way To Absence (2005)

And Now That I'm In Your Shadow (2006)

Caught In The Trees (2008)