Pitchfork

Damien Jurado has a serious commitment problem. Now, I do believe Mr. Jurado has a Mrs. Jurado at home, and though the last thing I aspire to be is a homewrecker, I cannot shirk what I see as a journalistic duty. Since the release of 1999's gratifying Rehearsals for Departure some four years ago, five labels (Sub Pop, Made in Mexico, Burnt Toast Vinyl, Secretly Canadian, Acuarela) have been graced with a Damien Jurado recording. Five labels in four years? He must be very popular. Someone had better keep an eye on him before he forgets how to get home and Jade Tree offers him a ride.

His latest release, a five-track EP edited and released by Acuarela Discos out of Spain, marks the first time Jurado has lent his talents to another continent. As is the case with many EPs, the album is less a cohesive statement than a collection of somewhat unrelated and distinct material. Here, Damien partly cuts the songs from the cloth he wore for his last full-length (which is less than four months in the grave), employing the same haunting balance of sparse, lo-fi acoustic architecture to frame quick, bleak, personal narratives.

"I Am the Greatest of All Liars" unconvincingly delivers a first-person laundry list of iniquities such as, "I'm the blood upon your sheets/ I'm the air you cannot breathe," over a stale piano and simple drum for less than two minutes-- and to no effect. It's as if I've heard him sing these lyrics already, only before he was kind enough to also subtlety kick out a lovely melody and nimbly kiss my ears with his golden pipes. Here it feels like an act. "Oh Death Art with Me" and "Big Let Down" are vintage Jurado (really vintage-- like Waters Ave. S.-era) , if not the sort that fail to truly cater to his strengths, but they also play it too safe to stumble. And the closer, "Butcher's Boy", is an innocuous acoustic blues number with textbook mortality issues.

"Now You're Swimming", however, is the reason you put on a Jurado record. Stark, and delirious with portent, he begins, "Now you're swimming/ It don't even feel right." The sound is layered but reserved, and it seems as if the song is intransigently grounded. Then, an inspired Jurado sings with unaffected solemnity a sanguine yet shrewd chorus that sneaks in from left field before falling again to the dirt. It's the sort of effortless moment he should always be able to conjure. Without the inclusion of this track, the disc feels nearly stultifying, but with it, altogether pleasant.