Damien Jurado

Since the late 90s, Damien Jurado has built one of the most important songbooks in the indie scene, earning critical support for his touching folk artistry, which often spills over into pop, roots rock, electric indie-rock, psychedelia and even experiments with found sounds.

While Nick Drake had a decisive impact on much of his work, Jurado has shaped his career after more idiosyncratic and unpredictable figures like Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Lou Reed and Randy Newman.

His independence stemmed, at least in part, from the influence of punk, and one result has been a concern for emotional authenticity that has led him to dig into other people's lives more than his own. Many of the Seattle songwriter's songs tell short stories of quiet everyday desperation, which have often earned him comparisons to the writer Raymond Carver.

After a handful of self-released cassettes, Jurado made his official debut in 1997 with "Waters Ave S." His second album, 1999's "Rehearsals For Departure", proved to be the decisive turning point. After more than a dozen albums released on Sub Pop and Secretly Canadian, he entered the Billboard 200 for the first time with the "Maraqopa" trilogy, produced by Richard Swift in the mid-2010s.

This was followed by a rapid succession of albums, including his first entirely self-produced work, 2018's "The Horizon Just Laughed", and 2021's "The Monster Who Hated Pennsylvania", with which he launched his own label, Maraqopa Records. The following year's "Reggae Film Star" drew inspiration from the hardships, both real and imagined, of those on the margins of the entertainment world, a theme already hinted at on "The Horizon Just Laughed". His nostalgia for American culture of the 70s and 80s resurfaced on albums like "Some You Hurt The Ones You Hate" and 2023's "Motorcycle Madness", the latter recorded live to tape with an expanded lineup.