Content area
Full Text
WEEKEND MAG
DAMIEN JURADO
"WHERE SHALL YOU TAKE ME?" (SECRETLY CANADIAN)
THREE STARS
On the opening song, his vocals unnaturally high in a claustrophobic mix that makes it feel like he's there in the room somewhere, possibly stalking you, Damien Jurado revisits the darkness on the edge of a middle American town that made Bruce Springsteen's travels in "Nebraska" so intriguing. The first words are "First came the scream and blood on the floor," and while he never makes it clear exactly what the song is all about, that only makes it that much more unsettling when he tells you "I am not an evil man." And then the keyboard that's been swelling ominously in the background starts to drown him out as he's about to tell you more about the habit he can't kick, his vocals drifting back in long enough to hit you with "Hang up the phone/I ain't finished yet."
He lightens the mood a bit on "Omaha," the second track, in part because his vocals aren't as haunting when he's in his upper register. But even then, he wraps the peaceful, easy chorus hook around a cryptic vow straight out of "Badlands" that "This country will know us by name."
Jurado even keeps you guessing in the more straightforward narrative of "Abilene," the title character ending the folk song with a question for the lover who's come in the night to steal her away from the parents who won't let her marry because "I am a young girl and you are a man without money." "Now fine sir, where is it...