What I'm Listening To: Damien Jurado

My son bought me a vinyl copy of London Calling for my birthday a few weeks back, and so that’s been on in the living room whenever I have the place to myself. It’s a touchstone, an old friend. I only need to hear Joe Strummer’s name to feel instantly both happier and more sad. He drags the needle hard in both directions.

I’ve turned a lot lately to the music I lived for when I was Lucian’s age, which means the headphones have been channeling a boatload of PiL and Siouxsie and Echo and Gang of Four and XTC and Bowie and The Smiths and The Jam, along with The Teardrop Explodes and Lloyd Cole and Patti Smith and Roxy Music and Lou Reed and Freddie Mercury and Peter Gabriel, and The Undertones’ perfect three-minute pop songs. I could add to this long, sad, beautiful list all night long and never get tired.

But I’ve also sought out quieter music. I’m hunting solace, I think, some meagre comfort in trying times. (I was up to exactly the same thing as a teenager with Ian Dury and Elvis Costello records, of course, and especially The Cure’s album Faith. I just didn’t know it quite so explicitly.)

I’ve tried frequently over the years to get the hang of meditation, I think it might help, and I’ll persist with that, but damn it’s not easy for me. What makes more sense (i.e. what’s easier) is to find stillness and even infinitesimally brief glimpses of peace in new music that resonates. It’s something I’ve learned about myself. And as often as not in these late pandemic times that seems to mean that I turn to Damien Jurado.

The video here dates to 2018, a song from the really lovely album, The Horizon Just Laughed. It’s a brilliant set front to back. The man is a sad-sack and impressionistic songwriter, a forlorn, sweet poet. He comes across the way I’d like to, and might, I suppose, if I was nicer. Here, he drives a beat-up Volvo through the forests and around mountains, and makes it look as uncomplicated as floating down some middling stream all dappled with sun and moon, depending. I’d suggest watching it full-screen.