Brothers and Sisters of the Eternal Son is Damien Jurado’s 11th album, but more importantly it’s the third piece in a Richard Swift-produced triptych that began with 2010’s St. Bartlett and continued on 2012’s Maraqopa. If those first two are linked by the psychedelic experimentation and other studio stamps unique to the Jurado-Swift partnership, Brothers and Sisters is a no-bones-about-it sequel to Maraqopa; several tracks reference the mythical locale conjured from one of Jurado’s dreams, and one song is even titled “Return to Maraqopa”. The two records begin in strikingly similar ways, too, far-away acoustic guitar giving way to Jurado’s far-away singing.
Brothers and Sisters, though, is yet another leap into territory that Jurado only touched on previously. Jurado has always been a storyteller, and those stories usually happen in the context of a particular song as he zooms in on the details of his characters’ lives and relationships. They are isolated incidents. Not so this time around. Brothers and Sisters zooms out to tell one story, albeit a fantastical, non-linear one cloaked in sci-fi imagery and layers of mystery. Characters and incidents and themes roll out and twist and wriggle their way through the album. There’s nothing like Maraqopa’s “Working Titles”, a story song that can easily and naturally be applied to Jurado himself: a singer hides from an audience that’s “not in tune with your progress” while someone asks, “What’s it like for you in Washington? I’ve only seen photos of Washington.” The references on Brothers and Sisters are sometimes specific but usually not of this world: geodesic eyes, a ship in the sky, zodiac pain, Jericho Road, Saturn. If the concept-album aspect of Maraqopa was a stretch, it’s undeniable this time around.
The religious overtones are more explicit, too. Jurado doesn’t shy away from his beliefs (“I definitely subscribe to the Christian faith,” he said in an interview about Maraqopa), and the Biblical references are all over this record. There’s the Christ-evoking title, and on “Silver Katherine” Jurado sings, “I have seen Him… pacing through the sky”; he ends the track singing, “Roll away the stone.” Allegory is everywhere in this dream/vision/hallucination, but it’s not the type of C.S. Lewis allegory in which we’re meant to have an aha moment. Sure, Aslan is Jesus, but I have no clue who Silver Timothy is. Or Silver Donna, Malcom, or Katherine. And don’t count on a big reveal that unlocks a way to understand the veiled “magic number” by the time the album closes. Yet these mysteries are curiously addictive more than they are frustrating.
Jurado has taken many left turns in his career, from the stark, dark folk of Rehearsals for Departure to the toe-tappers on Caught in the Trees, so at this point it shouldn’t be surprising that he continues to take chances. But you probably never imagined Jurado getting quite as funky as he does on the six-minute “Silver Donna”—the clicky guitar line and punchy, multi-tracked falsetto giving it a danceable groove. Jurado’s voice is usually recognizable more for its warble than its punch, and there’s still plenty of well-placed warble here. But this more adventurous stage of Jurado’s career isn’t just studio trickery. He often sounds like a new man, too.
“Silver Timothy” is the strongest track on Brothers and Sisters, and the prominent claves give it a distinct Latin feel. These moments of genre jumbling litter the record as they did on Maraqopa (though I wouldn’t make too much of Swift’s comments about dub and reggae influences; he most likely hears it more than you will), and the melange works in much the same way. The psychedelia and ghostly sounds make their way onto recordings because of the liberation inherent in Jurado’s work at Swift’s studio (aptly named National Freedom), but they remain on the final version of the record because they fit. Swift and Jurado didn’t throw everything against the wall in hopes that something oddly beautiful would emerge. They arranged it in such a way that odd beauty is communicated.
In lesser hands the quiet “Silver Katherine” and “Silver Joy” could seem out of place, like an anachronistic return to the spare singer-songwriter fare of Jurado’s early work on an album otherwise engaged in chance-taking. Instead, it’s sequenced as a welcome breather—a respite right before the cloudless chamber-pop fadeout of final track “Suns in Our Mind”. The album ends with Jurado singing, “Over there beyond the words, we are all we dream of,” a callback to a similar, earlier line: “Words are not needed.” It’s hard not to apply some of these lyrics about language to the album itself, since some of the words crucial to following the action of this story are never even sung, relegated to parentheticals in the liner notes (e.g. “after the accident,” “return to the crash site,” “heavy limbs / paper medicine cup,” “welcomed at the gate”). If anything, though, it shows how comfortable Jurado has become experimenting with new sounds and structures in this partnership with Swift. He has said he used to dread making records, and he doesn’t anymore. The freedom and comfort Swift provide seem to increase Jurado’s confidence on each outing, and it’s not unfounded.
