Album Review: Damien Jurado - Maraqopa

Seattle native Damien Jurado has been around for a good 15 years in his folk-ish bitsa guise – a long time to experiment across every genre that should be teamed with folk. 2010's acclaimed Saint Bartlett set him on course to deliver his 11th studio album Maraqopa, if the sweeping, wistful synth found therein on Falling Snow is to be trusted as a legitimate point of reference by the fourth track of Maraqopa on the Neil Young-esque This Time Next Year. The doo-doo introductory vocal is misleading as it turns into a tumble-weedy mainstreet of rimmed percussion and staccato western strums, though it's a ruse that Jurado employs well across this record – corralling the ear in one direction, only to bend it back with either an unexpected turn or a return to the unfolding dreamscape beyond Reel To Reel which begins to delightfully weld atmospheric, background synth with foreground whirligigs aplenty. Wayne Coyne would indeed be proud.

When it seems that Jurado has slipped away into his own world of ghostly choirs, he glides back into the reality of a voice clear enough to articulate on Working Titles: “You could mess up my life in a poem/Have me divorced by the time of the chorus”. Though he saves his moments of pop clarity for album's end; Museum Of Flight pleads: “Don't let go/I need you to hang around/I'm so broke/And foolishly in love”, and with Jurado's falsetto amidst simple acoustic strums and thoughtful lead embellishments, it makes one want to wallow in foolish love forever.

Maraqope is a beautiful album; enchanting, defiantly dreamy, and with ample room to build one's own daydreams in the spaces Jurado has purpose built.