What's New, Tomboy?

Resenha do Álbum

Since 1995, Damien Jurado has earned himself a faithful fan-base by recording his singles, EPs and albums with meticulous craftsmanship. The talented craftsman of contemporary folk from rainy Seattle makes all kinds of songs, ranging from the realist and introspective to the delirious and even frightening, and he does it all without drawing attention to himself. Sometimes his music is completely laid-bare, as was the case with In the Shape of a Storm, released in 2019. It’s a powerful album that pays tribute to his long-time collaborator Richard Swift who encouraged him to develop the instrumentation in his some of his productions and who passed away just a couple of months before its release.
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After a long hiatus in California, Jurado returned to the Northern suburbs of his native Seattle where he could be far away from the city centre and live near the woods. In What’s New, Tomboy?, he returns to a richer musical landscape but isn’t accompanied by any band from Ulaanbaatar. The result is somewhere in between with music that centres around his voice, which sounds even purer and more powerful than ever. What’s New, Tomboy/ is almost like a compilation of his musical diary entries, as if laying bare the sound of his inner voice with lyrics more intimate and introspective than ever before..
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The melodies are as impressive as ever, right from the bright, up-tempo Birds Tricked into the Trees, which opens this 2020 vintage. Influences from Nick Drake (Arthur Aware() can be heard, but they never detract from the uniqueness of Damien Jurado’s music. He occasionally spices things up a little bit here and there and even adds a cheap drum machine in When You Were Few. All in all, What’s New, Tomboy? is a wonderful, new yet timeless folk story by an artist who admits that he finally became a Beatles fan at the age of 47 and loved Kiss as a teenager. Luckily that doesn’t come through in this album… © Marc Zisman/Qobuz