DAMIEN JURADO > Caught in the Trees

The comfort zone is perhaps the worst place for a songwriter who specializes in discomfort, but that’s where Damien Jurado spent most of his last downer of an album, And Now That I’m In Your Shadow. Thankfully, his vicious follow-up, Caught in the Trees, injects some much-needed adrenaline into his soft indie-folk. Label: SECRETLY CANADIAN
[Rating: 3.5]

The comfort zone is perhaps the worst place for a songwriter who specializes in discomfort, but that’s where Damien Jurado spent most of his last downer of an album, And Now That I’m In Your Shadow. Thankfully, his vicious follow-up, Caught in the Trees, injects some much-needed adrenaline into his soft indie-folk. Backed this time by amplifiers and a live drummer that turn a few of his cuts into rustic, Neil Young-ish rockers, Jurado smolders with resentment, no longer playing the passive storyteller. “I got dimes by the dozen/ I’m placing a call to your husband,” he threatens. And this time out he has no patience for the down-and-out characters his songs once took pity on. “You look like you could use a rest,” he sneers, “You look like you’d be better dead.”