Maybe 13 really is a lucky number. That's the number of years into Seattle singer/songwriter Damien Jurado's career that he linked up with production extraordinaire Richard Swift for the former's 2010 LP, Saint Bartlett. The album saw the former painting his works with broader brushstrokes and an expanded palette of colors, exercising an accessibility that made the album stand out like a gloriously sore thumb in a catalog of Pacific Northwest folk rock that, for most of the previous decade, had only registered with the closest-watching of observers. As much credit as Jurado obviously deserved for making the leap from "good" to "great," though, it's inarguable that teaming up with Swift, whose reputation as a studio collaborator grows with every release, was Jurado's most inspired choice during Saint Bartlett's genesis. The echoed claps of the swooning opener "Cloudy Shoes" sounded like the remaining pieces of a puzzle, hidden for way too long, had been found and snapped into place.
Soulmates are hard to come by, and Damien Jurado definitely agrees. For his latest album, Maraqopa, he reunited with Swift in the latter's National Freedom studio in Oregon, the pair sharing performing duties. The results are kind of a sequel to Saint Bartlett: Like its predecessor, Maraqopa is largely varied in sonic mood, changing its tone song-to-song to include soft-psych freak-outs, rainy folk, haunted 1960's pop, and slow-burning oddball sparseness. That might sound like an unfocused mess on paper, but this collection's success lies in Swift and Jurado's restless experimentation. You can almost feel the heat off of the pair's kinetic synapses, as it radiates off every unspooling guitar line on the stormy opener "Nothing Is the News", or the gorgeous warbling that lies under "Working Titles".
Press materials for Maraqopa have pointed out that the title references a fictional, far-away place, going as far to subtly suggest that the record is a loosely drawn concept album. I'm not buying it-- partially because Jurado can't help but evoke the very real section of the United States he resides in, from the title of "So On, Nevada" to the Washington references in "Working Titles"-- but that's not to suggest that Maraqopa is lacking in concept. Jurado recently mentioned on Twitter that he drew inspiration from The End Is at Hand, a double-zip homemade compilation from California blog Aquarium Drunkard that rounded up obscure 1960s/1970s psychedelic folk and guitar music attached to the Jesus People's Movement.
Maraqopa's first half is, indeed, cloaked in the long shadow of religion, with references to "golden crowns," stars aligning, and the spookiness of faith (and, at times, lack thereof). The spectre of belief literally haunts a few of these songs; "Life Away From the Garden" elicits chills via organ stabs and faded, childlike call-and-response backup singing, as Jurado exercises his sneaky lyrical talents with double-meaning ("There was a time/ When we were golden/ Like the sun/ We were lights in the world"). By the time the spooky, deeply felt weirdness of the invisible-fame non-fantasy "Reel to Reel" arrives, Jurado's belief-fixated eye has shifted from the intangible to the tangible, underlining a motive that's run throughout his career: always ask questions, whether you're staring at the sky, down below, or the people around you on solid ground.
Maraqopa feels less revelatory than Saint Bartlett on pure impact; while the latter was a fine balance of chewy folk-pop delicacies and the basement-borne shadowy expressions that Jurado's built his fanbase on, this album is more of a mood piece, its melodic rewards teased out over time and drenched in the type of steady rain that his home state is known for. So, it's the second-best album of his career, then-- which is nothing to sneeze at, really. Maraqopa marks 15 years since Jurado's debut album, the Sub Pop-released Waters Ave S, and yet this fruitful renaissance has seemingly just begun, injecting new life into an artist who had less been written off than he'd been lost to the hype-obsessed, new-new-new sands of time. Whether the destinations be real or fictional, it'll be a real treat to watch where Jurado-- hopefully with Swift in tow-- will end up next.
