Damien Jurado

    Damien Jurado

    Also credited as Damien Jurado & Gathered in Song

    Seattle, Washington16 reviews across 10 releases

    emofolkindie rocksinger-songwriter
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    Damien Jurado is a Seattle singer-songwriter whose solo work grew out of the city's punk scene in the mid-1990s. He had played in Coolidge and made lo-fi cassette recordings before Sub Pop issued his early 7-inches. The 1996 Trampoline still carried emo's louder guitar edge, with distortion added to its comic songs, but Waters Ave. S. (1997) established the quieter approach that became his trademark: rough recordings, delicate chords, and stories inhabited by damaged or ridiculous characters. Ghost of David (2000) tightened that storytelling into a sequence about death, using sparse acoustics, subdued drums, piano, and occasional guest voices. He also treated recording itself as material, collecting found conversations for Postcards and Audio Letters. By 2005, his folk rock had become more direct without losing the bleak, unsettled characters at its center.

    In 2001, Jurado formed Gathered in Song to give some of the material a fuller band setting. The larger arrangement did not last as a permanent definition of his work; he continued to alternate between solo recordings and band-backed projects, while moving from Sub Pop to Secretly Canadian before the mid-2000s. He later left Secretly Canadian in 2018 and worked with Mama Bird Recording Co. and Loose Music. In 2021 he began issuing records through his own Maraqopa Records, and in 2023 released Sometimes You Hurt the Ones You Hate while announcing that he would no longer place new music on Spotify. He remained active afterward, releasing further material through Maraqopa and continuing to perform.

    10 releases reviewed