Damien Jurado has announced the release of a new studio album for 20th January 2014 via Secretly Canadian titled Brothers And Sisters Of The Eternal Son. The album is the follow-up to 2012’s critically-acclaimed Maraqopa and again features Richard Swift producing, the third time in which the pair have collaborated. When Selina reviewed the album for FRUK she remarked that Jurado sounded remarkably similar to Neil Young and that Maraqopa was “essentially a laid back folk album, but the subtle experimental idiosyncrasies turn this into something more unique.” Read the full review here.
Expanding on the existential journey of its predecessor, Brothers And Sisters Of The Eternal Son tells the story of a man who disappears on a search for himself but never returns. The world of Brothers.. is birthed from the deepening partnership between Damien and producer Richard Swift. Film-maker Dan Huiting captures these men at the National Freedom Studios in Cottage Grove, Oregon in a new album trailer which you can watch below:
Damien has also unveiled the offical video for Silver Timothy, the first single, which was filmed by Portland-based director Justin Koleszar over the course of three days in and around Terrebonne, Oregon. The video was influenced by classic sci-fi movies like Starman and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Koleszar described the shoot:
We tested our smoke machine in a Walmart parking lot while enjoying some Coors Lights. Our actor Luke Clements almost died when he stumbled on the edge a cliff that overlooked a 1000ft drop. We found a dozen deer hooves in the middle of the desert and later had dinner at Abby’s Legendary Pizza.
Josh Tillman has written an intriguing essay about Damien which can read below:
Damien is out of his goddamn mind.
This isn’t a recent development, but it’s an important aspect of his work that often goes ignored. In place of this key element is the idea that his music is a sober and in-depth excavation of the American landscape and rural psyche. Well, folks, I’m sorry, but it’s not. In other words: there is no railway station east of Ohio.
Abandoned motels, barren highways, magazine killers, Chevrolets backing out of driveways in the middle of the night, wedding photos, intoxicated hands, bleary-eyed circus clowns, barstool salvation, yeah, yeah, yeah, we get it: “America.” We’d all like to live there, but we don’t. No one does. We’re stuck with Jamba Juice and the internet, occasionally a charming, aesthetically pleasing dilapidated monument of the pre-Air Conditioned Nightmare on the side of the road. For a minute we can marvel and say “Wow, there’s nothing out here!” Nothing except a huge fucking interstate freeway and a massive telecommunication network on which we can Instagram bucolic isolation.
Out there is nowhere, but inside is endless.
You know what else they have a lot of in “America”? Religion. Don’t leave out that old-time relijun or your souffle of polite, revisionist, fantasy America is going to fall flat at the foot of the Cross. When “folk” comes up in their iTunes genre column, them lily-white champions of gravel-voiced, hard-won-wisdom-shilling, Millennial old-timin’ expect some goddamn symbolic imagery, man! Not actual faith per se, I mean, c’mon now, what are you: fucking insane?
Damien Jurado is every character in every Damien Jurado song. He is the gun, the purple anteater, the paper wings, the avalanche, the air show disaster, Ohio, the ghost of his best friend’s wife. It is a universe unto its own, with its own symbolism, creation myth, and liturgy. You might go as far as to call it a religion, and your religion is a character in his religion.
Level with me. You’re reading this because of Damien Jurado’s new album, Brothers and Sisters of the Eternal Son (produced by Richard Swift). You are a progressive minded, left-leaning person who in parlor-style conversation regarding the globo-political ramifications of Sky Person relationships laughs knowingly so as not to be judgmental and very reasonably concedes “Well, I don’t believe He’s some old man with a beard sitting up in the clouds” at which point everyone agrees on [insert benign middle-ground] and moves on.
Consider this: What if the only way to understand a religion is to create your own?
Who is this Silver community? Where the hell are they in the Bible? Is this heresy? Agnostic reference? Isn’t this sun business a little, I don’t know, animistic? Pagan? Go ahead and answer that question for yourself. I’ll give you a second.
Do you understand the music any better?
Faith is like theater: it isn’t meant to be read, or analyzed it is meant to be performed and inhabited. Upon being asked if he believed in Gawd or not, Norman Mailer replied, “Sure, why don’t you and make him better?”
You know that adage we all use so we have something to say while we shrug our shoulders? “People change”? That one. Is that applicable to Jesus Christ? Maybe he’s been on a personal journey of discovery since he ascended. He went through the 60′s, 70′s, he turned on, tuned out, got disillusioned. Why can’t we talk about that Jesus? Does it have to be the old-timey one all the time? American folk Jesus, ugh. The one who’s always winning Best Soundtrack Oscars for people. Rarely do stories of faith make us identify with Jesus. It’s Abraham, Satan, Silver Timothy, Salome, Dr. J, Saul of Tarsus; divinely imperfect brothers and sisters who give Gawd something to do.
Damien Jurado made up his own Jesus because a Damien Jurado album needs a beautiful Jesus. Some freaky space Jesus that I don’t recognize. The name is the same, a lot of the imagery is the same, but he’s reborn. Born again, I mean. Yeah, as if Jesus got born again. That’s what this album sounds like.
Jesus is out of his goddamn mind, and I want to live in Damien’s America.
Sign me up.
— Father John Misty; 09-20-2013
Tour Dates
Damien has announced two London live shows, a St Pancras Old Church show in December which sold out in two days and a Village Underground appearance in March 2014. Upcoming UK live info below:
01 Dec – Utrecht (NL) – Le Gues Who? Festival
03 Dec – Brussels (BE) – Huis 23@AB
04 Dec – London (UK) – St Pancras Old Church **(SOLD-OUT!)**
05 Dec – Paris (FR) – La Loge
06 Dec – Stockholm (SE) – Soedra Theatern
08 Dec – Madrid (ES) – Teatro del Arte
10 Dec – Berlin (DE)- FluxBau
11 Dec – Amsterdam (NL) – Red Cinema Sessions
Brothers And Sisters Of The Eternal Son tracklisting:
1. Magic Number
2. Silver Timothy
3. Return to Maraqopa
4. Metallic Cloud
5. Jericho Road
6. Silver Donna
7. Silver Malcolm
8. Silver Katherine
9. Silver Joy
10. Suns In Our Mind
Pre-Order on Amazon