Damien Jurado: Ghost Of David

Earlier this year, Damien Jurado released Postcards And Audio Letters, an album consisting of nothing but recordings from audio tapes he found in old answering machines and thrift stores. It was an audacious trick, but it spoke volumes about where Jurado is coming from as a musician. With an emphasis on broken, damaged, and distant love, Audio Letters is almost painfully voyeuristic and raw, with a sincerity that lends it further dramatic weight. That just about sums up Jurado's music, too: Weighty and personal, his new Ghost Of David is all ghosts and darkness, rarely lightening up beyond his assertion, on "Desert," that "I have seen the brighter side of the roads that lead to hell." Jurado's most musically adventurous record to date, it threatens to dissolve into a collection of buzzing interludes in its second half: "Walk With Me," for example, buries his barely audible singing beneath ghostly piano and the static voices on a police radio. The album features a few extraneous moments too many, from the introduction of Rosanne Thomas' jarring guest lead vocal on "Parking Lot" to the trashy rock of the two-minute "Paxil." But Ghost Of David's reverent beauty can be almost overwhelming, with "Tonight I Will Retire" propelled by a hypnotic piano line, a soft drum beat, and a religious fervor that seems as deeply felt as it is conflicted. A triumph of bleak moodiness, the disc maneuvers through all manner of emotional turmoil, closing with the persistent ringing of a telephone to remind listeners that Ghost Of David provides no answers.