Description
Label Review.
2020 album. Indie singer songwriter. Also available on Vinyl.
Our Overview.
Seattle indie-folk veteran Damien Jurado’ returns with his third album ‘What’s New, Tomboy?’ The artist and songwriter is in the midst of a creative flow that seems unstoppable, as he quickly follows up his 2019 debut. ‘What’s New, Tomboy?’ is an album that seeks respite in bare minimums and barren revelations: sometimes frail, sometimes affirming, sometimes wry, and usually a threadbare mix of all those sentiments. It could be considered Damien Jurado’s finest collection of music to date, with songs exuding the inviting warmth of a lone porch light gleaming amidst the disorienting darkness.
While Jurado has been rapidly expanding his discography, he’s been paring down his worldly possessions. In the new album’s official bio, he explains, “I got rid of almost everything I owned. It was almost like I had died, honestly. You know that feeling when someone dies and you have to clear out their apartment or their house? That’s what I did. It was as if I had died, even though I was still living. I donated five of my guitars to a thrift shop.” That impulse extends to the music itself: “I left out certain instruments on purpose,” Jurado writes, “so you’re making space for the listener to fill in their own melodies and parts.”
Though more stripped and grounded in their execution, songs like “Sandra”, “Ochoa” and “Alice Hyatt” are generous and candid in their vocabulary, eschewing the sometimes abstruse imagery of Jurado’s previous releases. “There is no hiding on these tracks.” Though ‘What’s New, Tomboy?’ is the first Damien Jurado record that ends with a question mark, he has never sounded more assured and content in giving up his ghosts: “I’m only living sentences // That were long before I got here.”
Where last year’s ‘In the Shape of a Storm’ stripped everything to reveal an artist at his most intimate, ‘What’s New, Tomboy?’ sees Jurado stepping back into a more fleshed out sound with his voice and rhythm section at the fore.
Tracklisting: Birds Tricked Into The Trees / Ochoa / Alice Hyatt / Arthur Aware / Francine / Fool Maria / When You Were Few / Sandra / The End Of The Road / Frankie